Multiparenting Cayen & Cayson

In a blink of an eye, Cayson has turned 3. In the past year, he has learnt a lot of new words and sentences and is a real imaginative kid. He can play with his dinosaurs and animals for hours, in his own make belief world. He’s also very eager and participative when I invite him to come up with random “once upon a time” stories.  He’s still his very polite self when he will say please and thank you. In fact, if you do him wrong, he will also request you to “say sorry to him” too, which is quite funny.  His mandarin is above average in his class (cox they are all expats) though sometimes when he sings, I still cannot make our the song. For instance, he makes us laugh when we finally worked out the song he’s singing when we heard it in a movie that day .. “小兔子乖乖，拔萝卜。。。。。 不开不开我不开，妈妈没回来” He still enjoys taking the bus and mrt , and so I would wake up early on Sunday mornings to take public transport. There’s once when the train broke down and we had to switched to bus midway . Man...

We had Cayson Parents Meet Teacher session last Saturday. As usual, it was a breeze as teachers were full of compliments as he was very easy to handle.  Here’s some highlights : He’s very observant. If they play any games where they hide stickers or objects, he usually will find 7-8 out of 10 items in the whole class.  He’s able to empathise. One time when a friend was unhappy, he went over to try to play with her. But she was still angry as another girl friend didn’t want to play with her, so Cayson asked her “why?” He knows how to share very well. When he overheard his friend telling the teacher that he want to play with a toy (that Cayson is holding on to), he went to pass it to his friend automatically without anyone asking.   He’s able to speak in full Chinese sentences, and tell a short story.  He’s able to 举一反三..so he learns very fast and will ask related question. If he learns something today, tomorrow he will be able to relate if a similar thing ...

Ah Pa brought Cayson to the supermarket. As usual, Cayson tried to reach for the escalator railing but Ah Pa stopped him as he’s worried that his fingers might be trapped in it as he’s a tat too short for it. Pa: no holding Cayson  C: need.... Later baby fall down. Baby die. No more baby. Ah Pa will cry. Pa: ???  Auntie standing behind them couldn’t help laughing. (Think he picked up the concept from me. I usually will warn him not to do certain dangerous things by saying .. this is dangerous. don’t do this.. later die, no more ah pa, no more ah ma. He basically parroted it right back) —- I was washing my hands at the tap. Cayson suddenly said, “don’t waste water. Later Ah Pa scold you!”  (Ah Pa is quite innocent cox usually I’m the one nagging Cayen for turning on the tap for too long and wasting water).  — I was remarking to Ah Po how good Cayson is with jigsaw puzzles. Ah Po agreed , saying how she sometimes also don’t know and needs to take very long to piece it ...

2018 has been a year of milestones, for the family and for myself.  2018 started with Cayson starting preschool (and crying for a good one month) but he soon got used to it. His friendliness and cuteness made him very endearing to all, he was an unofficial “mascot” for school visitors.  Q3 was fun as I visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi officially for the first time with the family. Apart from South Africa, this is probably the next most exotic experience I’ve had. This is also the quarter that Cayson and Cayen performed on the stage in school for national day and I must say Cayson was quite a natural.  Q4 was super eventful with me leaving Citi after 13 years for a brand new experience and adventure. This was also the quarter of many firsts for Cayen , from staying overnight in school for confidence camp for the first time , his first piano exam, his first ability to swim, his first big stage graduation concert. We also added more lessons for Cayen this year in order to try to ...

I think he’s a very perceptive child. Here’s why: After Cayen was dropped off for his piano lesson today, Cayson turned and asked Ah Po, “ why Cayen can have iPhone, I’m good, why I cannot have iPhone?”  This was because he has been observing that sometimes Cayen gets to have the iPhone to play games. —-  Cayson and Cayen were fighting over the toy dinosaurs. Ah Pa asked Cayen to give in to Cayson, which he did grudgingly.  After Cayson went into his bedroom with Ah Pa, he complained, “Cayen is naughty”  Ah Pa: why is Cayen naughty? He shared the dinosaurs.  Cayson: But he didn’t share, you made him do it.  Whoa, I didn’t think he would know the difference.  —- Ah Gong stopped his car in the carpark and they alighted , but Ah Gong didn’t move.  Cayson would ask, “ Ah Gong, not going home?”  This is because he knows that Ah Gong is a scooting off to another place.  —- We were aware of a kid who bites in school so I asked him about it....

November was an exciting month as 17th Nov marked his first full blown farewell concert on a big stage, and 9th Nov marked his first primary school orientation. December is starting out equally exciting as he just took his first test ever tonight. I don’t know the results yet so he was so no-nonsense and calm during the test - am so proud of him. Using my untrained ears, I think he did fairly well as there’s no awkward pauses or wrong notes per what I have heard at home when he’s horsing around. Perhaps he works well under pressure. Anyway, fingers crossed, hope he passed his first exam. Anyway, no videos allowed so here’s just a cheeky picture from the day. 

In the last one year, he was noticeably more able to share with his younger brother. In fact, sometimes we marvelled in his ability to repeat so patiently his instructions to Cayson repeatedly.  Perhaps Cayson’s empathy and sharing nature has rubbed off him, or perhaps the big brother responsibility has sank in, but relatively speaking, he had matured as the older brother in the past year (though the small regular fights still happen from time to time). When I aligned from the car each morning, he would ask me to “have a nice day”!  In the past year, he had managed to go for quite a few lessons , mostly non academic like sports, mental arithmetic, executive functioning, music etc. The only academic one was initiated somewhat by himself when he realised that his Chinese is not good.  This year, he showed that he is able sit in a place and do work with focus if he wanted to. His recent teacher review at Little Executive was pretty good as the teacher spoke of his great impr...

It’s been a hectic month of Sep as we have gone to Dubai in the earlier part. Hence, I realised I have skipped a month of update for Cayson’s milestones. Oops. And because we spent lots of time together, I was able to able to absorb more of his developments since the last month.  In Dubai, as he’s too short to enter most of the rides, the usual questions or action at each ride is to measure ride and to ask if he can go in. As such, after a few stations, he would ask , “ Baby can ?” We would reply, “Oh , cannot. Baby too small.” Then when we finally found something where he could take, we asked, “ Baby want to play?”  He replied, “No, Baby too small, Baby cannot sit. Baby angry!”  That’s when we knew that he’s getting frustrated at being rejected at so many rides. And he kind of understood what’s being angry.  Recently at home, his favourite new phrases are:  - “I don’t know” .. (And this is always in an exaggerated and cheeky tone)  - “no, no, no.. I don’t ...

Cayson had his first outdoor concert last week in early celebration for National Day. It was super hot that afternoon but all the children still tried their best to put on a good performance. We were very impressed by Cayson’s good showing as he danced and shook the shakers to the beat , and was quite a natural on stage. Cayen also performed to a very rap / hip hop tune with some cool moves (for their age).  At 25 months, Cayson is now having a strong self awareness like “mine” , “my space” , “I want”, “I like” are words that are common occurrences recently. In fact, on some nights, he will rattle off the list of people and things that he likes before he sleeps, “ I like Ah Pa, I like Ah Mama, I like Ah Yen, I like Yiyi etc” He’s also got a sense of humour as he will give me a cheeky smile whenever he’s doing something unorthodox.  Strangely he has grown more attached to us this month , almost reminiscent of 6 months ago. This means that he sometimes cry during drop off , or i...