Jan goes to school!

* Warning: This is a looooooooong post..........

Jan's turning 18mths soon and we thought it'll be good to expose her to some classes... so we signed her up for a holiday programme with Julia Gabriel for a week and the theme was "Off to the farm!". We also wanted to check out how the lessons was conducted and to gain some insight in teaching toddlers.

The first half hour was basically taking attendance and free play with all the toys on the red mat. Before lessons started, the toddlers will help put the toys away in the respective trays. Jan was quite upset on the first day when she had to put the toys away but it got better. She even helped the teacher to carry the tray!

The proper lessons was about an hour. It starts with morning greetings to all the teachers, adults and toddlers. The lead teacher would then do a demo of the craftwork that the kids would be doing shortly after. Here's the collection of art pieces that Jan did over the span of 5 days!

After the craftwork, there were songs, introducing the letters "p" and "g", "Magic Box" time, story-telling and more songs!

The last half hour was basically snack time and play time. Jan has many first-time experiences tasting different food like oatmeal squares, raisins, cocktail sausages, raisin bread, marie biscuits etc. I love to see her expression when she tastes the food. She also learnt to self-feed quite a bit from the class which I'm happy about :)

There was a variety of outdoor play time activities like the usual playground, sand play and water play. It was good exposure for Jan. She learnt to climb up the stairs, go through tunnels, down the slide etc.

All in all, I would say that this was a good experience for both me and Jan. It's actually quite tiring since I had to be with her in school in the morning, rush home after class and then get ready for work in the afternoon. Thank God for bringing me through the tough week!

Will post about the school excursion to the farm soon!

Well done Trinity!

All of us who send our kids to Trinity's nursery should really pause a moment and give it our most sincere thanks, because it offers awesome value for free!  After sitting in a Julia Gabriel class over the past week, I made a mental list of what I liked and dislike about the class.

What I liked was that Jan got to interact with and learn from other kids of her age group.  I also appreciated some new ideas of activities we could do with Jan (e.g. playing with playdoh).  Jan also learned more about how to feed herself!

However, I found that even for professionally trained teachers, it was not easy to engage children of this age using a classroom format--much of the time half of the children were lost in their own worlds.  Also, the instructor led parts of the session was only 1 hour long (the remaining hour is free play), so I find it a bit short...

So if I think of the session in a slightly simplistic manner, it was not too different from a typical Trinity nursery session!  Music, activities, snacks and play.  Yes, Julia Gabriel has more trained teachers, but Trinity has loving and committed volunteers!  Haha...think my church is going to get me be a spokesperson for the nursery.  Three cheers to Trinity's nursery!

I wrote to the zoo to send me a pet

We went to the zoo during one of the past weekends!  I haven't been to the zoo for quite a while, so it was probably as exciting for me as it was for Jan.  I rediscovered this world class treasure that we have in Singapore.  I was really impressed with how the place is setup, such that visitors can have close-up experience with a huge variety of animals, not be obstructed by cages and fences, and enjoy shade from Singapore's blazing sun.

Unfortunately, Jan was not feeling very well that day, so she didn't get to see much of the park.  Moreover, the park was rather crowded that day, so that further dampened our experience.

Nonetheless, I would want to go back there again.  I think it is a great place to visit, especially when you bring kids.  It is the perfect place for me and pt to bring alive all the animals we have shown Jan on picture books.  Moreover, there were a lot of informative display boards about animals in the park, and I think we adults can benefit much from the park too.  However, next time I would prefer to take leave on a weekday to go, hopefully it will be less crowded and more enjoyable.

Oh ya, if you are wondering what the title of this post mean, it is the title of a story that we frequently read to her.

Below:

1. The famous (probably now infamous) white tiger. 
2. Jan with a tired face...she was feeling sleepy for most part of the trip
3. These otters were really funny.   They would move around as if they were stuck to one another.

  

What should you learn next, papa?

Frequently I find myself spending time with Jan but have no idea what activity I should do with her.  I really want to make full use of the time to do something enjoyable together, and even better, teach her some useful skills.  Occasionally, I stumble into a good idea...but more often I am just blank.

So far, I found it useful to go to books and websites for help.  They have given me ideas of what skills I should focus on helping Jan develop, as well as recommended activities that I can do with her.

Moreover, once Jan master whatever skill that I want to impart, I will need to find new activities and new skills to impart her.  So I can't just learn once and the relax.

It's a constant learning journey for us parents!

Home Alone

Last Friday we had a church meeting to attend at night, but my mum-in-law was not around that night to baby-sit Jan for us, so one of us had to stay behind.

In the past, either of us could had stayed behind, since we both could put Jan to bed.  Recently however, Jan has become increasingly stickier to her mother.  She would cry uncontrollably for her mother during bedtime or when she gets woken up from her sleep.  Anyone else (except my mum-in-law) going to her rescue at those times would be greeted with more desperate cries.  I suspect it is somehow related to the fact that children of Jan's age is near their peak of separation anxiety.  Well, Jan's screams at me are probably also getting back at daddy for not attending to her cries in the middle of the night...

Anyway, strangely enough, we decided I would stay behind that night.  When my wife left the house, I was filled with much apprehension, as I have not put Jan to bed for a while, and I was worried that if my wife comes back to a crying baby who had way past her bedtime, she would not dare to go out by herself again...and I really didn't want that to happen.  So I prayed to God that Jan would quickly finish her milk and then quickly fall asleep.

After I prayed, I began executing my plan.  I had planned a series of activities to slowly wind Jan down.  At 7:30pm, she has already finished her dinner, had her shower and donned her sleeping clothes.  I let her run around for half an hour before I took her into the room to read her some stories.  By then, I had turned on the air-con and dimmed the lights, hoping that to use the cool temperature and the lighting to induce sleepiness in her.  I was started restricting her movements by placing her in the cot.  After a few stories, it was milk time!  Thank God that she held the bottle herself and drank more than usual (usually, she would only hold the bottle occasionally, drink a little from the bottle and would rely on us feeding the remainder of the milk to her using a spoon)!  As such, the milk feeding task was actually easier than usual.

Top: Jan holding her own bottle during our return flight from Hong Kong 

Once the feeding was done, I dimmed the lights further and played a music CD.  Now, I was really getting worried, because I still do milk feeds everyday but it must have been eons since I put her to bed.  With apprehension I put Jan into her cot and used the most soothing voice I could master to tell her to go to sleep.  She fidgeted around a bit before lying down, and within me I felt a rush of excitement as I felt I was nearing success.  Then I noticed she was clawing at her diapers.  Worried she had poo-poo'd in her diapers, I quickly picked her up to do a quick check.  Luckily no poo-poo, but I decided to change her diapers anyway since she was already on the changing counter.

The frustrating bit was that by the time I got her back to the cot, she wasn't as sleepy already...she roamed around her cot, made some attempts to lie down, before she decided it was time to summon the real bedside angel.  My dearest lovely Jan then started crying "Ma Ma!"  "Ma Ma!"...*faint*....

I quickly picked her up from the cot and whipped up my last trick--cradle her in my arms and walk her to sleep.  I have done it a trillion times and it almost always worked...only that we stopped doing that eventually 'cos we didn't want to make it a habit for her. 

The trick worked flawlessly--the crying stopped, her eyes started showing signs of sleepiness, and before long, she looked like she was going to doze off.  I battled in my mind if I should carry her till she was fully asleep--but risk re-enforcing a bad habit, or put her back into her cot then and risk her jolting her into full-wakefulness again. 

Left: Jan sleeping in the baby carrier during our Hong Kong trip.  Of course she would only fall asleep when it's mama carrying her.

I decided to be brave.  I put her down, and then held my breath to see what would happen.  Jan landed on the cot, sensed that she was out of the comfy of daddy's arms, flipped her body to a face-down position, and then started fidgeting around.  I quickly used my hand to pat her bottoms in the comforting granny way.  She looked asleep as long as I continued patting, and finally I realised that she had really fallen asleep!  Three cheers for Daddy!

Haha...a simple matter but amazing that I could write such a long post about it...heehee...really thank God for making it happen.  I even messaged my wife that the whole episode was a piece of cake ;-)

Hong Kong Holiday

We made used of the long weekend to take a short holiday in Hong Kong.  In a way, this is her first flight, because she took her first real flight when she was still not old enough to appreciate what was going on around her.

The flight to and fro went relatively smoothly.  The change in air pressure during take-off and landing didn’t seem to bother Jan.  Jan couldn’t really sleep on the plane though, think it’s too exciting for her to close her eyes.  We were glad we took SQ and got the first row because it was a lot roomier and it came with the bassinet.  I feel for other parents with young children who didn’t manage to get the front row…they looked like they were cramped in their seats.

Above: Jan in her bassinet

Jan also tried her first airplane meal.  SQ has this post-weaning meal for baby who just started on solids.  The one on our going flight (shown in the photo) was very heavily flavoured, so Jan didn’t eat very much of it.  The one on the return flight was much better.

Right: Jan’s first airplane meal

Traveling with young children is definitely not easy…have to constantly keep an eye on Jan throughout the flight, so we didn’t get to enjoy much of the inflight entertainment, i.e. the movies.  We had to eat our meals later because we have to feed her first.  Jan definitely kept us very busy throughout the flight.  The good thing was my parents helped to take care of Jan for part of the flight, so my wife and I were able to eat in peace and catch parts of the movie “Hancock”.

Our first night in Hong Kong wasn’t easy though.  Jan slept very late that day (past midnight!!), plus she was teething and she was in a new environment, so consequently she woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep till 6am….we spent the following day recuperating from that saga.

Amazingly, Jan was able to catch her naps during the trip in the baby carrier.  That gave us more flexibility in planning our time.  Nonetheless, Jan definitely slept less than her usual.

Left: Wonder mama carrying the 10kg baby all around town while baby catches a wink

We spent one of our days at Hong Kong’s Ocean Park.  It was numerous attractions packed into one, and we visited the ones suitable for families: Seeing the Panda and the Chinese Sturgeon, the aquarium, riding the cable car and seeing the ocean theatre.  It was a good place for the family to spend the day.  My parents had a good time showing Jan the animals, and we all enjoyed the sights and sounds there.  And at the end of the day, there is a cafe with a great view for all of us to unwind!

Below: Cable car ride; Grandma showing Jan the fishes in the aquarium; A great cafe to rest your legs while enjoying great scenaries

 

Right Brain Education?

I had always found it hard to understand why some parents send their children to all those fanciful right brain, left brain, centre brain training classes, and many of those kids have not even reach one!!!??  Why waste money on some useless classes?  Why be so kia su?  Why subject your children to school pressure so early in their lives?  Can’t we let kids be kids and enjoy their childhood?!!

Well, the amazing thing is…I am now also considering sending Jan to those classes.

I realised that because Jan’s generation is brought up so different from my generation, I can’t apply how I was brought up to bring her up.  Moreover, one of my fears is that Jan will start school a lot less equipped than her peers.  I don’t believe that having a bigger vocabulary or being able to play more instruments will give a child much advantage in school, but I do believe that equipping them with better learning methods and tools will let them learn faster and help build their confidence.

So now I am still half skeptical how useful those classes are, but I am willing to give them a try and see for myself how useful they are.

And I will definitely see if my girl enjoys those classes or feel pressured by them.  I doubt she will feel pressure though, ‘cos now everything new is interesting to her, and I don’t think they will put her through examinations yet.

Well, will tell you more after we get to those classes.

It has been a while!! Sorryz….

Many fans of this blog have hunted us over the past weeks for having kept silent for so long on this blog…a big apology to everyone…it’s all the mother’s fault =P

(…guess who took all the pictures…?)

Anyway, you must be wondering how our little girl has been these months?

She has definitely grown.  We know that because she outgrown her previous set of shoes.  We bought her a new pair recently, it is one of those that squeaks.  She enjoyed the squeaking sound a lot, and will intentionally stamp her feet to hear those sounds =)  My mum’s been complaining about how the sounds would impact Jan’s hearing though…but well…

Oh…and I forgot to mention, Jan is walking and walking and walking and walking nowadays!  Hmm…looks like I really haven’t blogged here for a long while, ‘cos I thought I should have mentioned that already.  Anyway, sometime in mid-August, she started walking more than crawling, and nowadays she barely crawls.  She enjoys going out for walks very much, and would get very excited when we put on her shoes for her.

Check out these cool photos!

Left behind…

Well, Jan’s gonna be left behind for a week while we are on our missions impact trip to Taiwan, Miaoli from 11-17 Aug.

The decision to go on a missions trip was not a difficult one as it was quite a loud and clear command from God to “GO!”. However, the thought of being separated from Jan for a week was a tad too long for me to bear. To prepare her mentally, we’ve been telling her about the trip and that we’ll not be able to see her for a week. Not that she can’t go with us, but we figured it would be better if she stayed home so that we can focus on doing God’s work. I’ll definitely bring her along when she’s slightly older :)

It’s been amazing how God has prepared the way for us so that we are able to leave for the trip in peace:

1. Mum was willing to take care of Jan while we are away;

2. SQ had a 2-to-go promotion so the airfare was actually quite comparable to budget airline;

3. I managed to take leave even though it was a busy period at work for me.

Thank God for his favour!

Before we left for the airport, we took some pictures of Jan monkeying with our luggage, toddling around the house and exploring the box of her new hi-fi set (which Papa managed to set it up within half an hour… amazing!!).

I was fighting back my tears as I left the house. It didn’t help when mum called to say that Jan was knocking at my room door when she woke up from her morning nap calling out for mama. She actually cried when mum told her that we are not home and have left for Taiwan! It does make me wonder if she really did understand.

We’ll miss you little girl and see you back home SOON!

p.s. Do pray for us whenever you think about us! :)

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.

Jan’s 1st Brithday

Jan turned ONE last Sunday!  We held a birthday party for her on Saturday at our place.  Check out her dress and birthday cake!  Though uncoordinated, they turned out to be amazingly harmonious in colour and style!

Her birthday cake also turned out to be much nicer than we expected.  We spent many hours trying to confirm the design, and when we did, neither of us had a good idea of how it will look like in the end, ‘cos we mixed elements from a few designs.  When I saw the cake on the actual day, I loved it!  A lot of kudos should go to my wife and her colleague Lawrence.  My wife for picking the cute bear, and Lawrence for helping us bring the bear to the cake shop a few days in advance.  I believe the cake makers drew inspiration from the bear and put together the final sweet-looking cake.

Pei Tze’s aunt also made a very cool looking jelly cake.  This, like the cake, exceeded my expectations.  I attribute it to the clever addition of garnishes like the deer, the fence, the plants and the “grass”.  Pei Tze added a final, genius touch to it…she put the jelly on a piece of glass (take from our TV console…), and that just up the class by several notches!

 

There was a lot of preparations to be done.  But thanks to the many pairs of hands that came to help, we managed to set up in time.

 

In almost no time, the guests began arriving!  Imagine the frenzy we were in…thank God most of the things went well.

 

There were also a lot of babies and toddlers...you might actually think we were running a nursery.  Fortunately, we had a play yard in the living room.

It didn't take long before the house was overflowing with people.  We estimated that there were 50+ adults and about 10 kids in the house!!

Thankfully, we had a huge area outside our house, which is rather unusual for HDB flats.  We were able to fit the catered food and a make-shift canteen in this corridor space.

    

The high point of the celebration was marked by the cake-cutting.  Jan probably did not understand what was going on.  I on the other hand, was awestruck when I realised that so many people were celebrating the birthday of a one-year-old!!  I then understood that it was really not just a birthday party, but a day where we celebrate the victory of surviving the first year of parenthood! ;-)

Well, we are definitely very thankful for how God has seen us through this past year, of how He has provided and protected us.  Happy 1st Birthday my little girl!