Our Baby of LoveBlogging about our little Darius

He has been speaking more lately so I thought it would be nice to record his voices so one day he himself or us may listen back to it. He would never speak this way again ever…if I don’t record it down now.

What I Did to Get his Voice:

1. Record using a digital camera. No need to point at him but should be near. I tried to record when the camera is not directly at him because he turned shy once it’s aimed towards him and doesn’t want to speak.
2. Use Audacity (a free voice recording programme that is so good!). Then record the voices by playing out the video in the computer. For my computer, I went to the top menu in Audacitiy, ‘Edit’>Preference>Recording Device>choose ‘Stereo Mix’. Then your computer can record anything that is played out, even youtube videos. I took some songs from youtube and recorded it in here. Edit the sounds. Delete unnecessary parts. Click on ‘File’. Choose ‘Export to Wav’. The Wav file is too big for online uploads so…
3. Open the itunes programme and click ‘Add file to Library’. Right-click and choose, “convert to Mp3″.  If you do not have this option, check out  ‘Edit>Preferences>General’ scroll to “When you insert a CD”, click on ‘Import Settings’. Choose the format  which is ‘Mp3 encoder, Higher Quality’. (Alternatively, a microphone attached to the computer with him speaking into it would be easier and you can skip Step 1 and the recording in Step 2.)

1. His Mandarin version of ‘No’.

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2. Him saying ‘One Two’ in Mandarin.

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3. Him saying ‘A Ball’, words he learnt from the Peter and Jane storybook.

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4. Him saying, “Love You’ in Mandarin. The background music was from my computer. I was listening to Piano Songs…so apt!

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5. Him saying the word, “Car” on his own when he spotted cars outside due to last week’s theme being ‘Car’. Only managed to record outside because he didn’t want to say it when I took out the camera to record. And he just kept chanting “car car…”. I like the way that he always say it with the “Cccc” sound (the phonetic sound).

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Also This Week’s theme for Learning is ‘Jungle‘ so I had been introducing animals of the Jungle to Darius. Specially bought a pack of animals with this huge tiger figurine when I spotted it. I left it on the floor after I had finished with the lessons and he would take them up and come to me holding the figurines and trying to say their names.

At first, I was really shocked because I didn’t intentionally teach him at all cos my point is not to let him know ‘Tiger’ or ‘Jaguar’. I just showed him the figurines when I was reading words about them. I also didn’t know he was trying to say “Jaguar” (it’ does not sound like it at all. His version is “Wooo..wah”) til he kept saying it for two days rather consistently and always held the figurine. This always made me smile and responded to him to say the word out for him.

He kept doing this actions daily so I wouldn’t ‘ignore’ him. I have some ‘me time’ at the computer in the afternoon after teaching him the subject for the day. Lately, I’m doing up his photobooks, editing photos and also reading more on scrapbooking. Sometimes, I’m blogging too. So I quickly grabbed the camera and took these down.

Video Here:

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A report on cot infant death which I’ve read in the papers today:

After struggling for years to explain why some apparently healthy babies die suddenly in their sleep, a study published Tuesday singles out serotonin deficiency as a key culprit in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or cot death.

Brainstem serotonin controls involuntary functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and breathing.

The researchers who conducted the study believe that SIDS claims babies’ lives because the serotonin-deficient brainstem, which works with no back-up during sleep, fails to spring into action to alert the infant when it is faced with a life-threatening challenge while asleep.

“When the baby is awake, the brainstem works together with other systems — in the forebrain, the cortex — to control functions like heart rate and breathing,” David Paterson, one of the lead authors of the study, told AFP.

“However, when the baby is asleep, the higher functions in the brain switch off, so the brainstem system itself is solely responsible for controlling all these functions,” he said.

So besides commonly known factors like environmental risks and stomach-sleeping, serotonin deficiency is now being blamed for the cot deaths. However, it appears that more studies will still had to be done before more can be known on how to prevent serotonin deficiency in babies.

More information on the report can be found here.

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Received new stuff I ordered for Darius from an online shop, MySpecialKid. The lady personally delivered and I handed over the cash in total. Darius laughed when she talked to him. Finally got the Do-A-Dot Art Markers which I had been eyeing for a long time in Amazon! I’ve been searching local sites for it for a while. Glad I finally found it in this shop. Darius enjoyed dotting it and kept laughing when I said, “Dot dot dot….dot dot dot” while dotting vigourously.

Never leave pencils lying around! One moment later, he had scribbled all over the table. Not removable by detergent but its natural enemy, the eraser wiped it clean. *shudder* If it was a pen…


His favourite books currently. A Must-Read daily is the ‘Three Little Pigs‘ by Papa or Mama whom had to use five sets of voices when reading. 1.Narrator. 2.Little Pig One. 3.Little Pig Two. 4.Little Pig Three. 5.Big Bad Wolf. For ‘My World’, he likes one particular black and white page and always want to flip to it. For Key Words, he says, “ah..bor(ball)” and “I” when we reached those words, even when there’s no ‘a’ in front of ball.

Ever since I started switching the level to 2 – Word Play Mode, he became so fascinated that he would stand there for a long time, trying out all the letters. Take out, put in, take out, change letters… THY, TXH, HWN… he selects all strange letter out of all the letters for the ‘middle’. Just doesn’t like ‘a, e, i, o or u’ which could most likely make some recognisable words.

Since last week, after I took out a word flashcard and figurine of a Horse, he has been carrying them around the house and showing them to me, saying, “Hah….hah…ssssss”. I didn’t teach him about horse, so he learnt it from ‘The Alphabet Book’ for Letter H. “H….Horse on House.” He still doesn’t know how to say “Hor…..sssss”.

Today, Papa took him out for an evening walk and passed by this playground. Immediately, he saw the horse statue there and said, “Hah…ssssss” to Papa. (In the picture, his mouth was opened, doing the “Hah…” but the shot wasn’t clear).

Last but not least, Darius is always wanting a tickle under his neck and offers it to Mama many times a day so she may nuzzle his neck.

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