Recovery

The girl has been sick for a week now, and I choose to write about something heartening while our house is covered with gloom from her illness (and whining). Since J's accident, he has been on the mend. Last Sunday, 9 days after his fall, we brought him for a follow-up consultation.

Close up

In good spirits

Surprisingly, the wait was not long (phew) and the boy was still obviously in very good spirits. He was on an adrenalin, bouncing around the waiting room playing with the water dispenser and feeling very pumped up from his last episode; where he did not cry. This boy is truly brave and he is also good at remembering positive experiences.


A nurse came in shortly and said she will be removing the stitches. She told J to lie on the bed while she went around preparing for the procedure.

Slightly serious (worried) face

In-progress

Look at that serious face

The removal was painless (literally) and the entire visit to the doctor took about an hour! Yay to speedy service. We deliberated where to go for our breakfast, then finally settled for something simple. It was a nice, breakfast session I enjoyed with my boy and it felt good to see him feeling fine and eating like a champ.

Peanut porridge and fried bee hoon

So this wraps up the episode of his accident. I was slightly worried that he may scratch the sensitive area as there are no stitches to stop him from being rough with the itch, but it's been 3 days since and all is well.


Hooray!

Anecdotes of J and K

Masterpiece by J
The other evening, we were on the subject of bookmarks and J decided to draw something for me. 'I make a bookmark for you, Mommy' he said.

So, we are holding hands and that (in pink) is a shooting star. He also delighted in writing
my name, and paper-stamping out the star/ribbon shapes.

If you notice, the above piece of paper has a cut-out. The reason why there is a cut out is because he was not happy with something he wrote, and was throwing a fit. In a bid to damage control, I suggested that he remove the supposedly offensive mistake. Then, as if he changed his mind/ had another idea, he picked it up and continued to draw on it; then handed it to me as another bookmark.

I am actually using this. It's quite handy!

Writing by K
K received a card for her birthday from the insurance company. She had been looking forward to a meal at Swensens' with the voucher she received, and we ought to bring her soon. Anyhow, I spotted this the other evening and it made me laugh.

It is me! I am the birthday girl. Me me me!

Truly, she was such a happy child on her birthday and we chatted about her favourite moments of the day, and unsurprisingly, she cited the hours she spent when her friends were around to play with her. She questioned me of my favourite moments and before I could answer, she said, 'I know! It's after my friends left and when all the adults were sitting around, right?' (Such a clever one, this girl)


Instead of lying to her, I said, 'Yes darling, that was one of my favourite parts, because I could relax and hang out with the family. But the other favourite part was watching you and seeing how happy you are. When you are happy, it makes me very happy too.'


Ahh, sometimes they are so sweet and know so much, don't they?

Jake decorates the door

Last week, J excitedly hollered, 'PAPA! MOMMY! COME HERE!'


He stood by the door, with his hand over a particular spot on the door. He waited until we were there and moved his hand away to reveal a picture.

Spot the pic on the door

Close-up

'I put it there! So you can see it! I knew you will like it! (why? we asked) Because you tell me you love me!'


I cracked up hearing his simple explanation of why he chose to put his picture on the door, and how confident he is that we will love it. This boy is full of funny and interesting ideas, and pretty much always confident of himself. This results in a very boisterous and loud boy!


I found it quite amusing that he'd have a picture of himself cut out in this fashion, so I probed and discovered that the teachers at school had prepared Children's Day gifts to the class and the teachers had prepared pictures to be placed on each child's gift. What J then did was to recycle the picture and chose to decorate it on the door.


Ingenius little boy!

Why you have children

So they can scratch the itch on your back

Quote of the day

"For someone who doesn't cook, I watch a lot of cooking shows" - me

Learning mandarin

Little J goes for Chinese lessons. I'm trying to remember when exactly, but it was one fateful evening where I discovered he had knowledge and vocabulary of mandarin at a standard of like, I don't know, sub-zero. Why? Because we do not speak much of it at home and he only knows (broken) English. Sigh.


So, learning from K who is our first-child-experiment, we enrolled him in class. I forgot when we started exactly, but it was probably about a year+ ago; as I discovered our routine from this post of our Saturday routine last year.


The lessons have paid off, and it is so amazing and I feel so proud to observe this boy display his knowledge of mandarin in conversation (still sometimes broken) and more superbly, his ability to identify Chinese words. Love it! We try to revise with him at least once a week, and he has truly accumulated a lot of words.

Revision time

He is pretty good and knows the words like, 90% and now we try to have him form sentences to reinforce his understanding of words.


Just for fun, here's sharing some funny sentences J has formed:

• 他去桌子 - he's probably thinking 'he went to the table' but we had to tell him it's a fragmented sentence that doesn't work on its own.
• 我看桌子 - 'I see the table' - again, a fragmented sentence!
• 我去运动公园 - 'I went to exercise at the park' - literally. Had to switch his sentence structure; though honestly this is such a common problem that we face even in adults (uh, me)
• 我看到五颜六色 - J thinks that 五颜六色 is 'a rainbow' - get it? He's forming 'I saw a rainbow' in this sentence! Had to educate him that the phrase means as colourful as a rainbow, but how he's used it is not right.
  
  

His sentences are pretty funny sometimes, but he will get better and it's all in the fun of learning and improving!


Little K is also on an uphill journey to improve her mandarin. Her advantage with the language is that she was exposed to it younger, though with no formal lessons. Her conversational mandarin is great but the theory of the language is a challenge.


Her struggle this year also includes hanyu pinyin which has been quite a feat. She has improved though which is great, but there is still a fair way to go. Her ability to recognise Chinese words is also a constant challenge; and truly, I don't blame her. It is not easy especially given that we do not practise enough.


So, on this learning journey we keep going!

Singapore Sling last Saturday

Due to our free Saturday afternoon, the husband - on a whim - suggested that we go for a drink. It was luscious.

Peanut snacks, our drinks and the best company in the world

We also introduced the concept of peanut earrings to the children - who were thrilled to no end.

Peanut earrings

Such an amazing and enjoyable time together! Really loving our time together on the weekend as a family. Woot!