Tiny Steps, Cutest Smiles

Haiz… my poor baby is sick again. Bad stomach. It must be me, the bad mummy who fed him the wrong stuff. Good thing is, this time round, he didn’t vomit. Bad thing is he kept having tummy-ache, high fever and diarrhea. Hopefully by the end of today, the diarrhea and fever will stop, otherwise we will have to admit him to hospital again to put on drip tomorrow. This morning, he woke up looking really tired/weak. I hope he’ll have a better appetite when he wakes up later. It makes me so sad to see him like this. Really have to pray that he gets better. I don’t want to see him on a drip sleeping on a hospital bed again. My poor baby.

Finally, Jaeden started jumping! Compared to his peers, he is considered late but we can’t really blame him. He is much heavier and bigger built than his peers and he started walking later. Now, at 2.5months, he is jumping! Yeah! Another milestone for my precious boy.

There was a CNY party in school today and all the kids were told to dress up in CNY clothes. I managed to borrow one from SIL. Here is my funky boy in a 唐装.

*cheeky and cheerful early in the morning getting ready for school

*walking towards school

Jae had been surprising us with many Chinese words and sentences. Just now, before sleeping, while he was looking at the newly installed mirror, he started saying “恭喜发财，新年快乐。祝福大家新年快乐呀！”. It was so shocked! This is the first time he spoke in such long sentences in mandarin. He continued these sentences until he fell asleep. That is so cute.

These few days, i tried dropping Jae’s nap in the afternoon and putting him to bed early. So now, he is sleeping from 7pm-7.30am! Yeah yeah! No more night feeds and wakings! As a result, i can spend more time playing/reading to him instead of spending the afternoon trying to put him to bed and chasing him off to bed early and spending a long time making him sleep at night. Sometimes, i don’t even have to wake him up in the morning, he’ll auto-wake around 7.15-7.30am and walk out of the bedroom to look for me and greet me with a bright and cheery smile. When he was having afternoon nap and sleeping late at 10pm, he’ll wake up grouchy and unhappy. If in any case we had to be out late, i’ll have to force him to take a nap. Otherwise, i’m happy with the current arrangement!

Every Saturday, we will head over to BIL’s house for dinner. Over there, Jae has 3 older cousins, Abigail, Alexander and Amelie. He enjoys playing with them. As usual, we spent last Saturday evening at their place.

*Jaeden with Daddy and cousins

*Jae posing in his new swim pants*

Yesterday evening, we were out to the playground as usual. On the way back to the lift, Jae decided to take the stairs. Initially i thought that he would give up after 1 or 2 levels, but he continued on. With 2-3 breaks in between the climb, we made it up 24 floors to our place without needing me to carry him! He didn’t want to go back home but to continue climbing so I had to trick him to go home. Oh gosh, those little legs that always wanted to be carried can actually climb 24 floors! Maybe i should bring him for stairs climbing more often, but not 24 floors though, it might be too exhausting for the little legs, maybe 10 and increase gradually. He surprises me as usual.

Jae doesn’t like oatmeal. I had to find a way to let him eat this healthy stuff. This morning, i made “Raisins Oatmeal Muffins” and i’m really glad that he ate almost 2(mini muffins) of them. Shall share this easy to make and super healthy muffins recipe(adapted from allrecipes.com).

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
2. In a small bowl, combine milk and oats; let soak for 15 minutes.
3. In a separate bowl, beat together egg and oil; stir in oatmeal mixture. In a third bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir flour mixture into wet ingredients, just until combined. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups until cups are 2/3 full.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.

The recipe is actually for plain oatmeal muffins, but i added some raisins because i like it.

Finally, no more tears at separation this morning! I think the trick is not to say “bye bye!”, but say “See you later!” and it works. Hope tomorrow will be the same or even better if he gives me a goodbye kiss. These mornings, he looks forward to “get ready” for school. He’ll walk over to the clothes hanger and point to his uniform. Every time, he wants to wear his PE t-shirt, but i had to keep repeating that its for Fridays. Now he understands that he had to wear the usual shirt and did so willingly. I’m so happy for him.

Its difficult to know what exactly he learns in school because every time i asked him, “Jaeden, what did you learn in school today?”, he’ll reply:”一二三，shalala”. This actually belongs to part of his goodbye song in school. One way of finding out is to listen to what he says during the day. I found out that he is learning shapes, because one day he suddenly say point to a triangle and said “长方形”, which is wrong but he said something in mandarin which i didn’t teach him before. He also started singing CNY songs, like “恭喜恭喜，恭喜你啊”. That is so cute! Another one is part of the goodbye routine and it goes “tick tock tick tock tick tock” and Jae will actually show/teach me the actions that go with it. I’m looking forward to listening to his adventures in school

More improvements! No more struggles with putting on his uniform… yeah! In fact, he was the one pestering me to get ready in the morning. The journey to school had been rather peaceful these days too! After school, he wanted to stay in school instead of going home. I’m not sure if he is very tired, but he would throw a huge tantrum on the bus, wiggling/screaming about, saying that he doesn’t want to go home. After we reached home, he insisted on wearing his school uniforms, even wore it for naps. Should i be happy now that he is too eager for school? The only thing that remains is the separation anxiety when i say goodbye to him. I guess the whole going to school drama is ending. Glad that Jae enjoys school.