From Mama,

To Darius at 16months old,

Indeed, the scale was not accurate. I had been suspecting that you are heavier than 10kg since I grew breathless after walking a few steps carrying you.
You are now 11.5kg! and standing at 83cm tall. How did you grow that 2cm in just a month? O_o

This month, you have not been a very good boy. Most of the days was spent in scolding you and preventing you from getting into mischiefs.  What happened to the angelic obedient you the past few months? You started to protest all the time while walking in directions specified by us, when we prevented you from walking into the traffic, or restrained you in the stroller because it was too crowded. You love walking so much that you just did not know what’s dangerous for you.

You now graduated from just stomping away in frustration whines to even sitting on the ground immediately which really made my blood boil. You also started whining when I was busy with stuff, crying over little falls, little stuff, or just plain wailing one after another. Finally, I implemented time-out corner for two days and you stopped whining from then on. It was harsh but effective. From then on, you became quiet instead, sometimes very moody doing things by yourself or suddenly giggling or laughing at something, looking up at me when you do that. I’m glad you know Mama prefers you laughing to whining non-stop.

For Motorskills,

You have mastered a little of sliding down the slide on your own, holding onto the climbing bars straight without stumbling and also climbing up higher levels with more speed. You could also step on your own without help but last week til today, you suddenly lost that confidence again and refused to step onto the next step without help. We could stand there for ages with you putting your one foot up on the next stair and still not moving up.

You finally discovered other cabinets beside the kitchen ones could be opened too and would touch the contents. One bowl got chipped because you tried to take something from it. We have to be cautious of stuff in our drawers now as you started opening and closing drawers too, occasionally catching your finger in it.

You could pull a pull toy behind you as you walk and your walk is really starting to resemble little runs now as you ‘ran’  fast away from me so often that I had to really run too to keep up with you. This is also annoying me on a lot of occasions as you often ran into unfavourable places ahead of me without waiting for me or even caring where I was. You just want to defy my directions to you being the assertive individual you are now.

You are better at self-feeding with a spoon now with delivery of food to your mouth without spilling but you still need help with scooping. But you also started protesting and being lazy to hold the spoon preferring us to feed you.

You can hold heavier objects now and had been trying to transport a stool, bags of stuff, clothing from one place to another.

In Interest & Behaviour,

You are starting to wave a little ‘bye bye’ to people when they wave at you. The funny part is you would look at your palms waving as if wondering why it is moving by itself. =.=”

You love people. This isn’t too good because whenever a stranger appear in our walks, you would want to follow after him/her. When you see children, you would go up to them but play beside them and observe them. When I remove you from a group of children because you might get hurt, you would protest so loudly and stamped away because you want to be near them.  This made me wonder whether I should bring you for classes because there aren’t enough children around us for you to interact with.

You are getting picky about your food and is taking a bit longer to finish your porridge. It might be due to your teething pains though as you only just started growing teeth last month. Now you have 8 of them, four on the upper front and four on the lower front.

With this constant need to gnaw something , you started having this bad habit of putting your fingers into your mouth sometimes and also small objects which were safe to you in the past. You especially like Green as you always take the green circular magnets to put into your mouth and recently, vomited a little when you choked on a green number 9 magnet which was in your mouth too. I needed to monitor you closely for any mouth movements in case you choked on strange things.

A recent habit of yours interest me. You had been doing this ‘reading of books‘ before 1 year old, stopped for a while, and lately, it came back again in more intense mode where you would read whenever you have free play time. Instead of playing with your toys, the books became your ‘toys’. You ‘read’ when you wake up, you ‘read’ when we finish breakfast/lunch/dinner, you ‘read’ after a nap and you ‘read’ when we come back from outside.  Whenever I’m busy doing something and finally checking up on you, you would be ‘reading’. I wonder what’s going on in the little mind of yours as you flipped and looked at the pictures carefully.

Your love for hide-and-seek got even stronger this month and you would giggle excitedly whenever we pretend to run away from you to allow you to catch us. This helped me a lot in moving you to the right direction because you would chase to find me behind a pillar. You laughed so much when we play the ‘snapping crocodile/dog’ game where we hide in corners of the house and rush out to ‘snap’ at you when you walk near. You also became more playful and would initiate play of this game by suddenly giggling and laughing while you walked after us. (we were just going to the kitchen across the living room). Yes, most of the time, we ended up playing ‘hide-in-the-kitchen-jump-out-when-you-near, “BAH!!” because you were just too cute.

You started playing peek-a-boo with the towel too by covering your face, then waiting for us to lift it up for you.

Our new game is snapping at you while I’m on your mattress, and you are on our bed, with your daddy at the other side of the bed, pretending we are crocodiles in the pit, jumping up to ‘eat’ your legs when you come near. You just laugh and laugh so much as you pretend-play with us.We are so glad you are appreciative of our efforts to make you laugh.

You like anything that’s long and pointed. Like if I give you a stick and a leaf, you would throw away the leaf and hold onto the stick. You would drop it and pick it up again. Similarly, you love straws, dangling straps and the IKEA cutlery of knives, forks and spoons.

You finally ‘see’ animals & enjoy them. Previously, you would only stare at cats and dogs from a distance or just walk past them. You did not see birds even when we try to point out to you. Bird Park was definitely not a choice of outing for you. This month however, you would become very happy whenever you spot birds resting on the grass. You would chase after them, and be in awe when you watch them fly away, looking up at them when they rested in a higher place. You would chase after the cat and try to follow it around the estate too.

You are getting a stronger idea of things belonging to a certain place. When helping to put the laundry into the washing machine (front loader)to be spin dry, you would move it again til it’s all in, if part of the clothing is lying on the outside. This surprised me because you used to just put it without caring whether it’s all in so I had to do it myself to wrap up. Now I don’t need to, because you are such a great helper. You also put away your toys one night by yourself into the box. And when told to put back the books, you would try to put it in sideways instead of the frontal manner because you saw me correcting the books to the right way.

For Speech/Understanding/Sounds,
You became quieter this month with less copying of our speech and tend to just go back to your usual sounds. Hmm, what happened to the explosion of speech last month? You like to just shout your ahs and mmm, progressing from soft to loud. Just today, you kept saying “na-na-na”.

You also started not ‘crying’ for change of pants when it’s wet due to a miss. Hence, I was frustrated with you the whole month as you blocked off the communication with me by remaining quiet.

You like certain songs played from the cd and would stamped your feet continuously with your hands held up in a mock dance which is really comical. When you hear, “坐火车” from the cd, you would dash from whenever you are to stand right in front of the Hi-Fi. You would chuckle when I do the ‘woo woo’ when I sang it. You also started opening your legs and stamping left, right sideways to do a little ‘dance’ to the music you like while holding onto a table/chair/sofa surface.

You would say “Bmm, mmm, mmm” in the right sound but not the right pronounciation when we recite the story of Mr Brown- the page where thunder is described, “boom, boom, boom”. You would tap your hands on the high chair tray once you hear the song, “我有一只小毛驴” because I always tap my fingers like a person walking or riding on a horse when I sang it.

Though you do not say much, you tend to watch our mouth very intensely whenever we talk or belt out a song. It’s as if you are trying to learn how to form the word by watching us. Maybe it’s stored in your mind, ready to release one day.

Caring for You

Your appetite for snacks has increased. You like to eat bits of my breakfast or lunch and stand right beside me with a saliva-dropping look even though you already had your breakfast cereals or lunch. I had no choice but to slip you bits of it. So you are eating a lot more this month and grown chubbier.

We have been training you to sleep on your own without patting for the night. So far, it has been quite successful. Sometimes, you still need us to put a hand on your chest and stroke it a little because you like to turn & crawl too much.

You have been drinking milk from the straw cup, sitting upright in your chair for some days but lately, we reverted back to you drinking from sprout because you cannot be trusted to just drink yourself without getting up from the chair after a while. Besides, you enjoyed lying down to drink so much that you would run to the sofa, climb up, awaiting the milk drink.

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I think that’s about it. The above summarised what I felt and know about you, Darius, from 15-16months.

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