Old Wives' Tales...

I wanted to blog about this looooooong time ago just that i always forget to take pics of Naomi's head. I'm not sure what is it call in english but i know in hokkien it's called "Chuin" and If I'm not mistaken, English it's called crown of the head? Please correct me if I'm wrong :P

Well....Naomi was born with 2 "chuin" and according to old wives' tales, those who have 2 "chuin"are bad tempered but highly intelligent people. Just interesting thing to share although I don't believe in it.

Another friend asked me to check the patterns of those "chuin" and if both are opposite swirl, I might have a baby boy and if the patterns are exactly the same I'm expecting a baby girl (She told me before but I didn't keep track so I need to check with her again). Looks like the pattern are totally opposite swirls-eh? (This only applies if your only child has 2 "chuin"). I found this when I was surfing the net. Just for fun: http://www.childbirth.org/articles/boyorgirl.html

Anyway, the most accurate way to check whether you are expecting a baby boy or girl is by ultrasound or you won't know if your baby is playing peek-a-boo until you deliver!

A Visit to the Zoo...

We finally took Naomi to Taiping Zoo! She knows most of the animal names by now and she’s very excited when she sees them. Before the trip, I’ve already told her that mummy & daddy will be taking her to see animals in the zoo….not sure whether she understand or not….hehe.
We woke up at 6:30am on Saturday morning and quickly bath and change cause we’re meeting Sharon and Jason at Jason’s house. Naomi was still sleeping and since it’s too early for her bath, I just changed her clothes and this young lady can’t wake up even I’m being rough with her! She really can sleep all the way….finally we left the house at 7 and reached Jason’s house around 7:15am. We had breakfast (BTW: Naomi is still sleeping) and finally start our journey from Penang at 8am. I bought 3 pandan cakes from the market for Naomi’s breakfast and lunch. Naomi finally wakes up at 8am and she sat at her car seat until we reached Taiping Zoo. I gave her some milk and she ate 1 whole pandan cake.
After about 1 hour drive, we finally made it to Taping Zoo. We started walking slowly and introduce Naomi to all the animals one by one. We saw monkeys, otters, birds, owls, tigers, lions, zebras, giraffe, bear, elephants, parrots, ostriches and many others. As usual Naomi will repeat after me when I introduce the animals to her….but only the last word…haha….
Mummy: Monkey
Naomi: Key!
Mummy: Elephant
Naomi: Phant!
She’s very observant…sometimes better than me! Actually I was pointing the giraffe to her and she saw a turtle swimming in the lake and shouted “tease” (referring to Tortoise). She’s more interested to see the fishes swimming in the sea rather than the big animals walking around!
It was very hot and humid and all of us was sweating and was very tired halfway! I guess being 61/2 mths pregnant and walking around was quite tiring for me. I didn’t expect the zoo was quite big and had to walk so much. Sharon, Jason and Tjun Aun was busy taking photographs with their DSLR cameras and Sharon said she didn’t like taking animals pictures and ended up taking Naomi’s pictures. She told me that day she took more than 200shots of Naomi’s pictures! LOL
Before we headed home we took Naomi to the children’s playground and let her play with the slides and see-saw. She loves the slides so much and kept saying “Zoom!” “Zoom!”Daddy was playing see-saw with her, she was sitting at one end and daddy had to move up and down so she can play with the see-saw. Daddy wanted to take pictures of Naomi so he stood up and Naomi said to daddy “Sit!” I was laughing so hard cause she’s so demanding!
We call it a day and left the zoo at 12:30pm and everyone was so tired and hungry. I can see Naomi is about to Zzzz and she haven’t taken her milk or eat anything and I’m worried she might be hungry. I know she drink a lot of water when we were walking around. So I gave her another pandan cake inside the car while Tjun Aun was driving to the nearby coffee shop for lunch. I was feeding Naomi and talking to Sharon and I told Sharon I’m very hungry la….what about you? She said yeah…hungry la…..then Naomi suddenly took my hand with the cake and put inside my mouth!!! Instead of me feeding her she’s asking me to feed myself! I don’t know whether is it coincident or she just heard me talking to Sharon and she heard that I was telling her how hungry I was! Naomi was half asleep when we reach the nearby coffee shop and we took out the stroller so she can sleep in it while we all eat. Tjun Aun help to feed her 8oz of milk and she finished all of the milk (with her eyes closed) while I had my lunch. I guess she must be very tired and sleepy already! Here are some of the pictures taken during the trip. Enjoy!

The elephant

The cool looking tiger...










It was so hot and humid!

The one and only family pic

Mid Autumn Festival

This is the 1st time Naomi celebrated the mid autumn festival. Last year she was just 6months old and too young to understand and play with lanterns.
At first, we plan to take her to Gurney Drive and participate in the walk but it has been raining non-stop for the past couple of weeks and we decided to let her play around the shaded house porch.
To our pleasant surprised, Alice (Naomi’s babysitter) invited us to her house for a mini mid autumn celebration with her kids and neighbours. I dressed Naomi up in long sleeve blouse and pants (I know it’s a bit warm and if I don’t the mosquitoes will bite her again!)
We reached Alice’s house at 7:30pm and had fried noodles, lor bak, French fries, chicken balls, fish fingers, “ang tao ‘thng” (dessert made from red beans) and “lek tao thng”(dessert made from green beans)! I bought some ice creams for the kids.
Naomi was very excited to see so many beautiful paper lanterns all lighted up. She’s also very happy to have so many friends around and you know all that while she didn’t even come near me at all! She just walked pass me as if I’m a ‘nobody’ or ‘stranger’ to her. She can mix with all types of people and I can see she will turn out to be one social butterfly….hahahaha
We even saw her distributing ice creams to her friends. Can you believe it? Of course she’s the youngest one of the lot but the way she act and all you’ll be surprised she’s only 18mths old!
It started to rain outside and so the kids can’t walk with the lanterns so we just hang out inside the house and outside the shaded area. About an hour after that, the rain stops so we decided to go outside with the lanterns. We managed to capture a few shots of Naomi with the lanterns but she was not really fascinated about the lantern. It started to drizzle again after half and hour later but all of us were still playing outside. I was a bit worried that she might catch a cold or fall sick actually but since she’s enjoying herself so much I decided to let her play for a while. Check out this pic where she saw the rain coming down from the sky under the lamp post light.
After about 20minutes we decided to call it a day and I was quite sleepy already :)
Naomi was all sweaty and dirty with all the playing, food, ice-cream etc. and Alice decided to give her a warm bath and changed her clothes to her PJ before we headed back home to sleep. We reached home about 11pm and Naomi was quite sleepy that time and she sleeps till 9:30am (the next day!)

Observing 'kor-kor' lighting up the lantern....


holding hands with the pretty che che. She's half Siamese


Naomi with Alice. Look at her hand...so feminine..hehe


all by herself.....

no lantern spotted this time....


beautiful lanterns at the garden....and the bamboo trees..love it!


the stuff....


Eating snacks...


with the babysitter's neighbours...


eating on her own...

Perfect!

Perfect circles...check out her drawing....this was taken few weeks ago!

Perfect pose.....so cheeky!

Perfect smile....ever-so-ready to smile for the camera but not so perfect face (mosquito bites!)

Terrible 2 - on the way….?

Less than 6 months Naomi is going to be 2 years old and some days her attitude is too much for all of us. She’s normally an angel but sometimes she will be like “a little monster!” I think I need to prepare myself for the terrible 2! I don’t believe they exist but I think they do!
If we don’t give her whatever she wants….she will start with
“Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” (it’s definitely crocodile tears,ok… more like screaming and wailing loudly) and her voice is very loud and high pitch sometimes I can’t stand the sound of it. I try not to give in as much as possible cause sometimes her requests seems ridiculous. She likes to draw a lot and would like to use a pen instead of her crayon and magic ink. I don’t want her to use the pen cause of safety reasons but she cannot understand. She likes to play with many sharp objects which I always will put somewhere she’s out of reach. She will cry and wail like there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes we will distract her with other things but she will always remember back and then continue crying again. I have tried so many ways to discipline her. I’ve tried scolding her, talk to her nicely and explain to her but all didn’t seems to work. I’ve yet to try “caning” her. My friend asked me to buy several “rotan” and keep just in case….but I didn’t try this method yet.
Nowadays she likes to bring all her soft toys(big ones until there's no place for me to lie down) and put on our bed and play and normally I won’t let her do that as she even want to ride her “pony” on our bed. Then yesterday I decided to give in and let her play for a while. Then she turned to me and said “mu-mmy, Good!” (pointing at me) I was shocked cause she’s saying I’m good cause I let her play on the bed ma as normally I will scold her and say NO to her. How can I stay mad at her for long?
I did some research from the internet and it says that some terrible 2 can start as early as 18months….but I hope it will end early for her…..sigh
Now everything to her is “NO!”. Whenever I ask her do you want milk? Her answer is No (even though it’s time for milk time). I ask her do want to shee-shee (pee or go toilet). Answer is also No! Ask her anything her answer is No! Even I ask her want to go kai-kai(shopping mall)? Her answer is also No! Helllppp!!!

Naomi (The Big Sister)

Since we found out we were expecting a second baby, I’ve been trying to break the news to Naomi, however gently as possible. I’ve reached the 21weeks mark and 19more weeks to go before my due date (12th Jan 2009). But so far her response was okay and happy?
Every night before she goes to sleep she will kiss my belly and use her hand and said “sayas” “sayas” (Sayang-sayang) to my big belly. Sometimes she will look at my belly and call out “ba-bey” “ba-bey”
I feel she’s not the “jealous” type…which is good for us cause we’re very worried on how she will cope with another baby at home, attentions or siblings rivalry and etc. She has shown her caring and loving characters to all family members as for now. Even my babysitter said she so “pandai ambil hati” of her whole family which makes everyone love her lots!
I wanted to test her and confirm she’s not the’ jealous’ kind so I carry one of my friend’s 7months old baby boy that day during wedding. Tjun Aun was carrying Naomi that time and I was carrying the baby boy and just standing next to Tjun Aun. Naomi’s reaction?
She was smiling at me and the baby and her hand was caressing the baby’s arm. I thought she will wail and cry for me (which I’ve seen my friend’s daughter did that to her whenever she carries another baby). The baby boy was very active and I was wearing those big funky earrings that night and he kept pulling (playing) with one of my earrings. Naomi started to said “No-No-No” to the baby. I think she’s trying to protect me from getting hurt? Clever Girl.
I already imagine both of my kids getting along and playing together. Naomi will be a good big sister.

win, lose or draw....

If you guys are familiar with the game show Win, Lose or Draw, this is what we as a family are playing right now. Naomi will ask me or daddy to draw and then she will guess what we draw. Sometimes, I ran out of idea on what to draw and will pass to daddy to take over the drawing.

Most of the time we will repeat whatever we have drawn before. She can guess almost all of our drawings. I would say I'm a pretty good artist myself...haha...but something funny happened yesterday night. I was drawing baby. She said babey! I said yeah...correct! Next, I draw star, she said Star ! Correct! Then I was planning to draw a moon but if i draw just circle she might not know so i drew a Crescent Moon. Then she said 'na-na' (banana). Then I looked at my drawing again...oookkkkayyy...my drawing is not that bad and it did look like banana....hmmmm...then i said yeah! u r correct!! Take a look at all the pics and you tell me...

Baby


Star

Crescent (Moon) or Banana?

Art Time....

Naomi has shown interest in drawing and she can sit on her high chair and draw for hours.

Naomi's hand co-ordination has improve tremendously and I observe her drawing skill and just less than 2 weeks she is able to draw in circles. Before that, she just simply scribble lines.

Take a look at her before and after pictures!

This was taken 2 weeks ago...

This was taken today (27th Aug 2008)

Although not a perfect circle or round shape, she has indeed able to swirl her hand round and round to achieve that. :)

Practice makes perfect

Some tips....

Parents...

If you are planning to potty train your baby/toddler at an early age. I discover these few tips that might be helpful although I still haven't 100% successful in training Naomi but this is what I discover along my potty training journey:

You can start anytime and when you know your baby/toddler is ready esp she starts to communicate with you more.

1. Start with no diapers/cloth diapers during daytime

2. Be very proactive in bringing the potty (Esp. after her milk, meal, water)

3. Normally they won't tell you so I need to ask her "Do you want to 'shee shee'? (Up until today Naomi still can't tell me she wants to do business so I have to ask her often-normally abt 1 hour after her milk/water, she will do her business) cause by asking her often it's something like remind her and hopefully this will be register to her brain that she's doing the right thing by doing business in the potty instead of her pants.

P/S: If I forgot to ask her she will do her business in her pants !

Same = Shame ??!

Naomi is confused with these 2 words but she's not aware of them. I caught her few times making these mistakes but not sure how to correct her or explain to her.

First incident:

1) There's a picture of a frog inside her book and she said 'frog' and i have a tupperware which has a 'frog' cartoon on it and she pointed that tupperware and said 'frog' same, same (but while saying the word 'same', 'same' she's doing the action of 'shame', 'shame' (using her index finger and caressing her cheek). Then I told her same means similar, shame means 'liu','liu' (tak malu) but she didn't get me. I totally forgot about it until yesterday and it happen again.

Yesterday:

2) She saw a 'balloon' picture in her book and there's another picture on the box itself and she told me 'same','same' (and doing the 'shame', 'shame' action at the same time). This time I told her SAME is not the SAME as SHAME. I think this sentence will make her more confused! hahaha...i think i will let her discover this when she grows older while i try to think of a way to explain to her the diff.

wish me luck!