Pacifier Weaning Attempt

We found a hole in Randall's pacifier last night which we suspected was a result of his biting. So, we took this opportunity to try weaning him off the pacifier. We showed him the hole and told him it could not be used. Then we asked him to throw it into the rubbish bin, and told him no more pacifier. He was ok at first but started asking for it just before he went to bed. We reminded him that his pacifier had a hole and he has thrown it away. He asked for "the blue pacifier" (which was the other pacifier other than the white one he was using). We reiterated there was no more pacifier and that he's a big boy now, he could sleep without it. He tossed and turned restlessly, yawning all the while with his eyes wide open. Then he asked, ""Zui zui" (pacifier) where?"
"In the dustbin".
"Why in the dustbin?"
"Because it's spoilt"
"Why spoilt?"
"Cos there's a hole"
"Why there's a hole?"
"Cos Randall bite it"
"Why Randall bite it?"
"That, you'll have to ask yourself"
Silence...
"Why yourself?"
"yourself means Randall. Who's Randall?"
"Don't know.." (Hmm... In denial)
I think we repeated this conversation over and over again like 10 times. Finally, he knew that he would not get his pacifier and he started to repeat to himself, "Pacifier spoilt", "Pacifier in dustbin".
One hour past his bedtime, he was beginning to become hyper, grouchy and irritable, like a drug addict without his drug. It's probably understandable since he was at it for the past 2 years. However, between sucking pacifier and his thumb, we decided then that the former would be a better choice. We can take him off his pacifier ultimately but not his thumb! Looking at him suffering from his withdrawal syndrome, Daryl almost wanted to give in and give him his new pacifier but I persisted. Finally, with much patience and struggle, he was exhausted enough to sleep 2 hours past his bedtime.
After 2 hours' sleep at midnight, he woke up in tears, feeling agitated and grouchy, asking for his pacifier again. That was when we decided he should have his pacifier back. Poor boy... I must give him credit for trying but I don't think he is ready to go cold turkey for now.

Boobs?

We were in the lift of our block last evening when Randall pointed at Daryl's chest (fortunately, with no one else around) and asked, "What's that?" Daryl replied, "Boobs." And Randall went, "Boob... Book... Boobs.. Boobss..." all the way to our house and then, he blurted, "Dad Dad's Boobs!" Hmm.. On hindsight, we should have told him that was Dad Dad's chest. Sounds more... polite.

East Coast Park

Brought Randall to East Coast Park to cycle last Sunday morning. He LOVES it, which is good for us since it's one of the few exercises we can do together with him now. At first, Daryl was careful at riding his bicycle with him in the baby seat in front. But I think this little boy found the speed too slow and told his dad eagerly, "Faster! Faster!" Haha... ya, he's one hell driver himself. You should see how he turns the sharp corners and stops abruptly when he drives his little car at home! By the end of the one-hour ride, Randall was so tired he mistook a lady (wearing the same colour) on bicycle for me. I was returning the bicycles and when I turned around, I saw Randall standing beside this lady, hugging her leg and shouting, "Mummy carry! Mummy carry!" Her guy friend (or boyfriend) who was on another bicycle behind her stared at them, flabberghasted. Haha...

Secrets

Just because Randall understands English, Chinese & Cantonese, we have problem telling secrets in front of him. So, we resorted to using Hokkien (which I suspect he understands abit) and spelling the word. Like this morning, I wanted to tell Daryl that I forgot to bring his favourite yoghurt along to MIL's house. Knowing the consequence on reminding him of his favourite food (bugging MIL the whole day to eat yoghurt), I'll have to tell hubby mindfully, "Oh no, I forgot to bring... y-o-g-h-u-r-t!". Hmm.. Wait till he starts schooling and learn spelling.

Quality Time

Randall has been really grouchy on weekday mornings lately, and it got worse the past two mornings. We contributed it to his emerging molar teeth. We also suspected that it's due to our limited attention for him on weekday mornings. As he gets older, we realise that he needs more of our time and attention. Of course, we'll be more than happy to spend our time with him but unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time on weekdays. Most of the mornings, he'll start hounding us to play/read/watch TV with him. He'll pass me his toy aeroplane/bulldozer and ask me to play with him. I'll just put it aside and ask him to play by himself, or just play for a sec before carrying on with my stuff. I believe he can sense our patronizing attitude. It'll be at this point that he starts kicking a fuss and ask me to "Carry! Carry!". Well, being a 12-14kg boy himself, I could hardly carry him and do my stuff at the same time, without ending up sweating like a pig. So most of the mornings, I will end up sweaty AND feeling sorry for not being able to give my darling boy more time and attention. And knowing myself, I'll definitely go crazy if I stop working to be a sahm (stay-at-home-mum). So, I think I'll just try to spend more time with Randall during the weekends and as and when I can. Hmm.. How can anybody ever cope with more kids??

Library

Randall enjoys going to the library. Everytime he's there, he will hum his song and walk ahead, straight into the children's section where his shelves of toddler books are placed. Last Saturday, as he was walking in the children's section, he bumped into this malay boy of the same height. His hands were at his waist, chest out and his chin tilted up, looking and behaving very challengingly at Randall. Being a protective mum myself, I hurried towards them, just in case he started hitting my boy. But Randall just looked at him in amazement, with the what-are-you-trying-to-do look. They stood very closely, staring at each other for a good 10 sec. No action, no talk, nothing. Then the boy decided to move backwards, while Randall just stood in his spot, swinging his hands, in his extremely good mood and oblivious to the "danger" he was facing. At this point, I quickly pulled Randall away. Sometimes I just hope that Randall knows how to protect himself in circumstances like this. But then again, if not for his amiable approach (to anyone other than his family, that is), I think they might have started fighting already. :P

You're my sunshine

Everynight, Randall will sing himself to sleep, and he'll also ask me to sing to him. Lately, he seems to like "You're my Sunshine". Kept asking me to sing it to him. So there I went, singing the same old song to him last nite. When I sang the last phrase ("...Please don't take my sunshine away"), he asked, "Why? Why take sunshine away?"
I was stunned for a moment, "Urm.... why... hmm... cos Randall's gonna grow up and have his own life... And then.. urm... he'll have his friends and work?"
"Where's DadDad & MaMa?"
"Eh.. we'll be old and then... urm.. DadDad will stay home and play his computergames and MaMa will watch TV. Randall will go work, OK?"
He seemed pleased and said, "OK!"

"I like this car!"

Randall's car sticker creation on dad dad's car seat while on the way to mah-mah's house in the morning. Randall holding the car sticker asking, "What colour is this car?"

Sun Morning Excursion

Since Randall loves toads, we brought him to see the closest thing to toads last Sunday at Jurong Frog Farm. How do we know he likes toads? Cos that is always one of the first animals he'll ask us to find in his all-time favourite Animal encyclopedia. Once, he put his hand against the picture of the toad's leg, and said "same same". That was when I thought he'd appreciate the Frog Farm. He was elated and definitely amazed to see so many bullfrogs in the many sections in the farm, going "croak croak!". We brought him to see the tadpoles in another pond and he commented, "like salamander like that", which appears to be quite a keen observation. Since we were at it, we brought him to Hay Dairies which was a few minutes' drive away. He didn't seem to be too interested in the goats though. Maybe he was too tired to enjoy fully or the weather was too humid. On the whole I think we all had fun going on our morning excursion. We would definitely bring him to the Qian Hu Fish Farm again now that he identifies and appreciates animals more.

Short-term memory

Daryl will call his mum a few times during the day to make sure that things are going well with Randall. Most of the times, he'll come back with little funny stories about what Randall did. For instance, just this afternoon, mil went into the storeroom to get hangers. Seeing that she was inside, Randall closed the door, and went to play. After a while, he realised that his "mah-mah" was nowhere to be found. He ran all around the house looking for her while shouting anxiously, "Mah-mah! Ni zai na li (where are you)? Ni zai na li?" It took him awhile to recall that he locked his mah-mah in the storeroom. He quickly rushed to open the storeroom door and said, "Mah-mah, ni chu lai (you come out)!" Haha... I think they don't have much memory capacity at this age, do they?

Stay over or not?

Wanted Randall to sleepover at mil's house tonight since we're bringing him home after dad's bd dinner tomorrow. It's a practice for us to leave him over at mil's every Fri so we can take a break and have our personal time. Told him this morning but he didn't really respond. On our way to mil's house, he just sat quietly in his seat, fondling his doggie's ear and looking out of the window. It was so unlike him to be that quiet. I could sense his reluctance in staying over. So I asked him if he wants to come back home to sleep or stay over at mah-mah (mil)'s house tonite. He said immediately, without thinking, "Home! Choa Chu Kang". It was only when we told him ok, and that we will fetch him home to cck tonite, that he started to cheer up and be his usual self. Hubby & I thought that he's a big boy now and wants to come home more often. But the funny thing is, he wouldn't insist if he knows that he has no choice. He'll just be very solemn and give us the sad expression. Hmm.. maybe he's like me. We just keep our mouths shut when we're not happy.

Bonne soiree!

I'm learning French from company's sponsored lunchtime class and so far, I've already missed 3 out of 9 classes. I think I'm pretty hopeless in languages. Took up Jap for 2-3 yrs a few yrs ago, and I still couldn't figure out what conversations, not to mention speaking it. I'll stutter when the teacher asks me questions and I think it's obvious from my facial expression that I'm trying to (i) figure out what she's asking and (ii) constructing my reply in the right sentence. It doesn't help that ALL objects in French, including beverages, countries etc have a gender, and we're supposed to use the correct "a", "the", "my" etc attached to these objects. Only 9 lessons and I think I'm almost dying. Despite all these, I admit that I feel most delighted when I can recognize what the actors in movies (like the waiter in Spiderman III) are saying when they say "Si'l vous plait!", "Monsieur" etc. I'll nudge Daryl and whispered excitedly, “Hey! That means "please"!”and "That means “Mr.” in French you know?" ;) But to my dismay, hubby didn't seem to be impressed.. haha.. Well, I guess I really need to be disciplined enough to make some time to sit down and go thru what has been taught so far and I'll try not to skip classes if possible.

Current Obsession

Randall has invented a new game called “Xiao Huang Doing What”. He'll ask us, “Xiao Huang Doing What?” and most of the time, his beloved stuffed dog, Xiao Huang would be sniffing his sole or kissing his cheek. Usually, it's the former followed by the latter. Then we'll have to answer what his dog is doing.

He's over "The Wheels on the Bus" phase and doesn't seem to be too interested in TV very much nowadays. His obsession at the moment would be Pooh & gang, cars and computer games. His favourite character varies from Pooh to Tigger to Owl. I think his obsession for Pooh & friends started when we introduced him to this animation movie "The Tigger Show". Ever since, he would point out all things related to them and exclaim, "Like this!" or "Love this!” to each and every Pooh character he encounters in the shops/malls. Fortunately, he has not shown signs of getting the gimmes for now. His obsession spreads to my family too. My bro would buy things like Pooh magazines or Pooh hp carrier for him. One of his favourite books currently is the Pooh Animal encyclopedia, which my bro's gf bought for him. It's his daily routine for Daryl to go thru the book before his bedtime. I think he can name all the creatures in the book, from sea anemone to toad to crickets. On each page, there will be pooh and gang making some comments. He will follow his favourite Tigger's action (e.g. pouncing) and say "Like Tigger like that". He will also make up stories like the page where Pooh throws a ball and the next page of a pic of a crab. He'd go, "Pooh bear throw ball ball, hit crab. Crab eyes come out!” As for computer games, he obviously picked it up from Daryl. Daryl has been showing him flying monsters from his WOW game. So every time he wakes up from his afternoon nap during the weekends, first thing he'll do is to dash to Daryl's computer room and insisted on sitting on his lap to watch "monster". This obsession gives me some time to distract him on our shopping trips. Daryl can now bring him to the game shop and watch computer games while I eat my meal in peace or do some shopping alone. Once, Randall even offered to buy a car racing game for Daryl, saying "Randall buy for Dad Dad". You can imagine how touched Daryl was.

Good Friday

Had a wonderful Good Friday hols this year. We booked into Marina Mandarin hotel with Randall on Good Friday itself and stayed for 2 nights. We had Fish & Co. for dinner and. Randall loved the fries and rice! At bedtime, he became cranky and wanted to leave hotel. Kept saying “want to go back Choa Chu Kang!” Hubby & I thought that it was a very good idea for this "trial" test cos it would be horrendous if we started him with an overseas trip like going to HK. We couldn't afford to fly back all the way to CCK if he became really cranky! We managed to persuade him to sleep in the hotel in the end by sleeping on my lap and singing songs to him.

The second day, we went to AquaMarine café for complimentary buffet breakfast. Randall enjoyed looking at the "bubble" lifts (those see-through ones) ascending and descending while we had our breakfast buffet at the couches beside the lifts. He loved the raisin muffins and cereals with milk. Ever since that day, he always asks for “Cereals with milk. Want cereals with milk”.

My parents came the next day in the afternoon to babysit Randall while we prepared to dine out to have some couple time and headed to Esplanade for Phantom of the Opera. The performance was excellent and we enjoyed every moment of it.

Overall, I think all of us had a pretty good experience away from home, in a way.