I really need to be more active in jotting these down for memories as it is recording the moments now. When he gets older, we will start appreciating these little quirks of his. The problem is, I always forget to record them down once something happened, thinking I’ll do it later in a consolidated post like this…And what happened later? I totally forgot to blog or can’t remember what IT was that struck me as something so interesting or funny at the moment. I think from now on, I’m just going to post it every two days, regardless of how short. This would help me to keep track easily.

Okay…back to THIS.

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SPEECH

Chinese

He called his Wai Gong, 外公 last Sunday as ‘Vai Kung’.(same monotonous sounds)

On Wednesday and Thursday, I took out the Chinese Reader Series and started reading to him during dinner time again. The focus is on “拍球”， “大小”， “拍手”， “笑”. He recognised “大” a long time ago. So I was trying to get him to pronounce “小”. He could only manage to say “ssss…..”.. “ao”. He doesn’t know how to say “笑” too but when we read it for a second time, he was able to say, “haha’. Cos I was going “hahaha” after I read the word. He remembered that. And he knew “拍” means tapping on something as he would demonstrate it while I read that word.

On Friday Night, he suddenly said, “小狗” (xiao gou) while watching a story video, exactly as it is!

Saturday Morning, he could read the word, “小” in the storybook as “xiao”. Interesting that he quickly caught the pronounciation after hearing from the video and me.

Saturday Afternoon, I was doing some family flashcards for him using the pictures of our family members with the chinese wordings underneath the pictures. Had an idea to do this because he only see our relatives at most once a week and for 1-2 hrs so he doesn’t know how to call them when he sees them. Because of the success with pointing to the picture of my dad and him able to say it, I thought it would help him to have a picture of each family member so he could practise calling them. He came to me while I was working on it and I taught him by pointing to the picture on the screen and asked, “Who is this?” and answering for him, pausing so he can say after me. He was very co-operative this time and I was surprised he managed to say a number of words. “阿嘛”， “姑姑”， “哥哥”， “大伯”. The “大伯” was difficult for him and he couldn’t say it no matter how many times I sounded it out for him. So I tried writing it down, “Da Bo” and he pronounced it for me immediately!  I do not wish to teach him Chinese using the hanyu pinyin way though so I’ll only use it when he can’t sound the word. Alas (sunday today), when he saw his Grandpa and Grandma, he still did not wish to call them. Will need to print those pictures out and work with him more.

English

When a word has three syllables, he would say two. When it has four, he would say three of it. Most of the time, he manages two with a phoneme in the middle sometimes. Example, “Es..cccc..tor” (Escalator) or  “Ee..(ff, slight pause)..fant” (Elephant) ” or “Te.ff..phone” (Telephone).

Two words: “Sit down” are the most recent two-word phrase he could say. He would also imitate me with a not-clear, “Take back“.

He could say ‘open’ and ‘close’ now and he would say this when he opens a door and closes it.

He could say ‘train‘ now but not very accurate. Sounded more like ‘f…ray’. The “Tt” sound is still difficult for him. He used to say ‘tree’ as it is in but all of a sudden, he kept saying very loudly as “ffff…eee”. Argh. No matter how many times we say the correct word for him, he just proclaimed his way of saying with a lot of confidence.

New words he recognised (the past week after his birthday and this) and pronounced are: “Sam”, “Night”, “Dark”, “Up”, “Eyes Shut”, “Go”, “Diaper”, “Cup”, “Moon” (mainly from those new books I bought recently).

We are teaching him the days of the week and he can now pronounce a little, “Sunday”, “Sa(tt)day”, “Friday”, “Tuesday”, “Ma…day”, “We..s.day“. He sounded out Thursday too but it was still difficult for him. Once we were surprised by him though when we asked the usual question, “Today is Thursday, Tomorrow is…..?” He shouted out, “Friday!!!”. Not sure whether he just loves Friday or he really knew though. He never said it though when we were asking on other days.

He could now say, “Pee pee” and “Poo Poo” after intensive coaching but he doesn’t USE them. Sigh!

He could say “Teacher”.

From the Peter and Jane Series, he could finally pronounced “Peter“. Jane, he says as “Yayn”.

I’m teaching him to say “I am Darius” in response to “Who are You?” (make it simple). He said “Day” as “Di..” (for those days of the week too) but not always. But I’m happy he was able to say “…Rius”. After two days (last thursday and friday) of repeating after me, we started making some progress, like I would say, “I…am…Day… (held his hands to point to himself while saying) and he would say, “…Rius”.

The funny thing is, he is always trying to show off or be more clever than he really is. So on Sat (the third day), his thought process led him to saying “Yes!!!” , after I had said, “I…am…”, so his name became “Yes”.  Thought process goes like this. He responds to his name Darius with a Yes, taught by his childcare teachers. So, since he must say “Darius” after “I am”, he THOUGHT, he should just say, “YES!”.  This is him thinking he’s very clever or something. It’s frustrating when you are trying to teach him something and he insists that “I am… Yes!”. This is similar to the things I had written about earlier when he always must say something in related to the word I’m teaching him instead of saying THE word itself. E.g. When we asked him to say “Pull”, he would say “Push”. Shirt in Mandarin, he said in English. “Up”, he must say “Down”.

He started calling me as “Mummy” sometimes. I prefer “mama”.

When he whines when he wants something, he goes, “mm..Ma!!..mmm.Ma!” And it goes on and on til we give him the thing he wants. Not only to me but to Daddy as well.

BEHAVIOUR

Dar is potty trained somewhat but since he started CC, he had been wetting himself very often because the teachers could not be counted upon to bring him to the toilet when they had other kids to handle. So his ‘training’ is somewhat going backwards. It’s something I dislike since I had spent so much effort and time training him to be independent. I knew this was inevitable the minute I decided on going back to work. But they promised to help us and now started laxing. Sigh.

He was having some potty pause when he started wetting himself during the day constantly without informing us, during naps and even at night. It was a difficult time for us last week when we had to change his bedsheet and protector sheet in the middle of the night (still soaked through a part which is not waterproof). There was so much laundry to do! With the bad weather, it was more difficult too and one morning, I even had to use a hair-dryer to dry one still damp cloth diaper for school for 20 minutes! We noticed that it was because he was teething as he constantly touched his mouth with his fingers. The touching stopped and immediately, he stopped wetting himself constantly the past few days. So glad!!! We thought back and remembered it happened once too where he was teething and wetting at the same time.

His premolars and bits of his molars are showing and now his canines on the bottom are appearing. He doesn’t have much problems except for more frequent bedwetting and waking up a bit more frequent in the night, crying. Had to pat him back to sleep sometimes but not for very long.

He is into opening and closing cabinet doors lately. Especially when he goes to his grandparents’ houses. He would run to one cabinet, open the doors. Then ran into a cabinet at another location (room, kitchen), opened the doors. After that, ran back to the first cabinet, closed the doors and ran back to the second cabinet, closed the doors again. This is not really wrong but it’s very irritating and not ‘normal’ when he kept doing this for the entire 1 to 2 hours we were there! Yes. That’s ALL he does. He doesn’t talk to us, or do anything with his grandparents or relatives. JUST doing this. I hope it’s just a phase and erh hmm, not a behavioural problem. He usually does this though when we adults are talking to each other and not playing with him. Maybe he felt bored. He always such a good kid though that he would not come and ‘disturb’ us while we are talking. He would not whine at all but just do these actions in the background.

Throwing more tantrums lately with throwing himself to the floor, breaking into anger runs and banging his hands about when we did not allow him to do what he wanted.

Today, we witnessed for the first time, him saying a string of gibberish words in an angry tone while slapping his hands and walking. This was after we repeatedly stopped him from going down the wet playground slides at several playgrounds. He went on and on for a while as if he was scolding us and complaining like an old woman. Shocking. His mood became better after seeing him so disappointed and sad, we allowed him to play at a slide right underneath our flat. Ended up with a wet bottom…

Ending with These…. More snippets to be recorded when they come again.

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