Multiparenting Cayen & Cayson

As his classmates speak mainly English and we have somehow read more English books during bedtime reading , Cayen's Chinese has deteriorated a lot. Hence, to rejuvenate his interest, we started to read a lot more Chinese books at night. 80% Chinese and 20% English.  Also, Ah Pa started to teach him how to play Chinese chess so now he needs to learn how to read the characters in order to play.  This is also a good game as it requires him to stop and think - very good to practise impulse control and strategic thinking. I think he really likes the game as he would initiate it as one of the games we can play after dinner and we have been playing a lot last week as I was not feeling well and it's a good quiet game to play.  Lastly, to encourage reading, I told him that Chinese also has sight words (actually I don't know for sure). So as I read Chinese books, I pause to let him identify the few commonly recurring words. I started with 了 ，as he's quite tickled that every page ...

Recent reading incidents that surprised us in Dec 16 :  1. He read out the options on the menu:  Soup, spicy, dry  Fish soup  Water  2. In the cab: Don't leave your iPhone and wallet behind (I suspect he memorised it Cox it's Handphone, not iPhone)  Ride - Tap - Earn (after I told him months back)  3. Along the highway on CTE  C: are we going to Changi Airport ? Me: how do you know? C: it's there (points to the signboard)  4. Me: It's around 500+ C: oh, that's near 600.  (Didn't see that coming) Anyway, tips to encourage kids to read without flash cards.  - teach them signs and decals you can find in the taxi / car or road signs (you can keep them still too) - when waiting for meals, read menus. Find games to play like counting the number of symbols etc ("not available", chicken, vegetables, etc) - when doing night time reading, point to the words as you read , and invite them to join in the reading (I.e. read the bigger words or wo...

After watching Paw Patrol and Blaze and the monster machines, he's very into volcanos and machinery. So he was all ears when I went through those pages in the picture dictionary and that was a good start. Today , I tried to educate him about the gemstones. But this was not easy as he kept calling them rocks and how he's going to crush them using jack hammer and drill. Focus was not on the colours but all about the crushing. So I kept repeating "gemstones or crystals" Then he suddenly asked ," gem as in Kaya and Jam?? " We said , "no, gem as in gem. Not Jam." Then I tried to educate him , "diamond is the hardest material on earth . It takes a diamond to cut a diamond" Cayen asked, " a diamond to cut a diamond? Why? Can't I use a jack hammer and a drill?"  I told him that a diamond is the hardest and you can't cut a  hard object with something softer. Da quipped on the side, " I think can crus...

His first real praise from teacher was on 5th June where she said he was a  good boy ( 乖 ) and for the first time he was able to sit throughout the class to listen to stories n songs instead of wa ndering around.. Before I could post an entry to commenmerate that, on the following day, he was up to his antics of pulling stuff down from the board while the teacher was teaching.  Oh well, so it was only a flash in the pan of good behaviour the previous day.  Also, the teacher made a comment that day that he ate two bowls of rice .. And after thinking for a second, she said "come to think about it,  he eats two bowls of rice every day" . While I am not sure where the rice went to (he's only 10.9kg and that's only average) , it's good that he could get more out of school ... (值回票价..haha) Yesterday, he got his second praise from the teacher! (And I thought I better post it ASAP!) She said that cayen is very very obedient nowadays especially durin...

Yesterday, he turned 20 months. At night he surprised me by reciting 1-10 in Mandarin when he was about to drift off to sleep. (He knew the English version about 2-3 weeks ago I think, just before counting toes). Anyway, before end of day, he was up to his old antics of throwing toys all over the places and throwing them backwards in fact. This was despite my advice to him to "慢慢放”. So without father warning, I scooped him up and parked him into naughty corner for 5 seconds. Then I told him to go pick up his toys ... And put it all back into his bucket. This is what happened . He looked so forlorn as though he was made to 劳改 (reform through labour) on his 20 mth's milestone. But c'est la vie baby .. You gotta be responsible for your actions , every day , any day . YouTube Video - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ever since the last time Cayen went to a very hot wet market, he's now reluctant to go to the market as he's a bit of a polar bear - doesn't take to heat very well. So this time when we went to the market, he went to the playground next to it instead. He climbed up the stairs for about ten times I think , exhausting his poor mama me. He was also happy to be in the companionship of two little girls who were climbing up and down as well. After the market, we went home but soon proceeded downstairs to play and also swim as Zach and Xavier were going down as well. While Xav was younger than Cayen , he certainly took to the water like a fish and hardly flinched even when he dipped his head into water or sometimes swallowed some water. Cayen, in stark contrast, was mightily upset whenever water was splashed into his face or if he accidentally dunked. Conditioning is all the difference ... Cayen, you gotta practise more. Mama is gonna get ready her sunblock. Thereafter, aft...

Friday morning marks his 9th day in school. He's now very wary of papa and grandma stealing away when he's not looking. Hence, he did cry a little when he discovered they scooted. However, after he took a nap of 30 minutes, he was apparently chirpy and good for the rest of time till school ended. What a breakthrough! At night, I was pleasantly surprised that the school updated down his activities in school in a notebook ie whether he ate breakfast, pooped, snacked and lunched. However , I also noted two updates were wrong so I highly doubt if they really paid attention. For instance, he missed his lunch when the van broke down but it was checked. That day we knew from the teacher he pooped but it was just recorded as change of diapers.  Apart from the notebook, he was also loaned two books from the school. Apparently parents have to try to read to the kids every day to entrench a good reading habit so I suppose this is only the start. I was surprised to find that one b...

Have you seen a room of crying babies ? If not , try being late with their lunches. Apparently, the food delivery truck broke down. Hence, the children didn't get their food on time. So teachers have to activate their cornflakes Ration in an attempt to calm the hungry/ angry babies down.  As my mum had arrived at 12 plus , she brought Cayen home for lunch since it had not arrived even at 12.30pm. For the first time in a very long time, he wolfed down his lunch. (And got it all over his face) Today, he also tried to read to Grandpa the hungry caterpillar story.  Unfortunately grandpa didn't know what he was trying to say. Haha.  Also, he appears to know right from left (ah hem, Godma, pls note). I will test him to confirm again tomorrow. 

Cayen always surprises me with the things he picked up with only 1 mention. On Sunday, I overheard my godson saying "Haha" at the right juncture when we sing the song "dang wo men tong zai yi qi" .. so I just casually sang the song to Cayen a few times and tried to get him to say "Haha". He didn't say the word at the right juncture but he managed to  pronounce "Haha" when prompted. So I didn't think too much about it yesterday but out of fun today, I decided to sing the song to him and paused at a certain juncture to elicit his "Haha" not expecting anything,  but he actually said "Haha" when I paused! So he remembered the song and the "Haha" sound.   Then we were watching TV together and I saw a chicken. So I asked him a chicken lay an .....? He loudly proclaimed "Egg!" and again I was astonished. I recalled telling him a few times earlier about this relationship when he picked up the word ...

We started reading to Cayen since he was 6 months old and given the number of times we read his story books , I would have thought he would be a very earlier speaker .. or at least call Mama before 1 year old. Unfortunately, that didn't happen but the saving grace is that his comprehension seems quite strong. While he cannot pronounce many words at an early age, his priorities were very clear. "Um" is the first word and he would say it when he wanted to eat. And he was always very fast to point to the bananas, the books and anything that he wanted. And his memory seemed rather good too as he could remember the most random things I taught him, such as the Mastercard logo, Handicapped sign, the most recently the No Smoking sign. Well, the breakthrough in his speech really happened these few days. From only being able to say Mama, Ah Pa, Yi Yi, Egg, Up and Bird last week, he suddenly could say More, Duck, Wooo!, Cat, Bye, Woah Woah yesterday. Hope this is the start of e...