My exploration in life… (diary for baby!)

After a "supposed break" from school for a month, school activities started again formally from yesterday.  I said it was a "supposed break" because I hardly left school due to my returning a few times a week for two or three weeks to work with two children from my P4 class this year.  I kind of initiated it, so I can only blame my enthusiasm now.  In total, I stayed away from school for only a week, returning to school twice or thrice weekly in December.  Ha.

I ended my holidays with a fear.  YEN woke me at 4-plus in the Friday morning to tell me that our little Prince fell from the bed again.  I was in a daze and everything was in a blur when I huriedly picked him up from the floor on the bedside.  Our boy was on his fours and cried a little whimper.  He stopped his cries immediately after I picked him up and even smiled.  No, he did not look too bothered by the fall and showed no visible signs of the fall.

YEN and I are totally puzzled at how FELIX fell and what transpired that led to my sleeping in an adjacent way I normally do on our bed.  The way this fall came about will continue to puzzle us the rest of our lives, I think.  Luckily again, FELIX seems to be pretty aloof and is unaffected by the fall from our observing him.

RACHEL has had quite a few not so good habits nowadays, of these, a few comes across to us as displeasurable ones that we hope she’ll stop doing them.  Harmless ones are like lying on the floor in the house (probably due to the temperatures around?), running around the house to play with me as if she was running away from me for fun or trying to catch us, coming to us with remote controls to indicate that she wants to watch the educations VCDs we bought her, etc.

A few that we’re not so please with are opening the door and coming into the bathroom when we’re using it, opening drawers in the study, our bedrooms and the kitchen to see / play with the items in them, opening the storage areas of the TV console to take things out to play, leaving toys and books all over the place wherever she is, etc.

I got my timetable for the coming year on Friday.  I’ll be teaching all but one of the five P4 classes, two P5 and two P6 classes for PE next year.  My total number of periods are 37 or 38, an increase over the first half year I was just posted to the school.  Now that I have little excuse of being new to the school and thus ignorant over things, I better be more active in finding out about things that I need to know about around.  Sigh…  ("_)

Gosh, I think I’ve created a monster I cannot control in YEN - her playing of the application "Pirates" on Facebook.  Ha.  Previously, I had logged on and spent like maybe about half-an-hour or so (okay!  Maybe a little more than that!) on applications like that on Facebook and she had quizzed me what was the attraction of it.

I did not have a good answer on that, and when she was free a couple of days ago, I decided to let her try her hand at it, in a bid for her relaxation from the hustle and bustle of life, as well as for a common thing for us to do / talk about together.  I think we need more control about the amount of time we spend on something like that!  =P

We wanted to take the chance of the Hari Raya holiday yesterday to bring our two little tots to the Zoo.  As we had guessed correctly, the consistently wet weather these days did not give us a reprieve and we have to postpone the trip.  We were rather disappointed, but we know that the trip is on the agenda once we have the chance in the coming days…

YEN bought this "ergonomically designed" spoon-and-fork set for RACHEL to learn using the cutlery herself.  We tried letting her hold the spoon to eat scrambled eggs yesterday but she was only interested to use the spoon to scramble the egg bits somemore.  Ha!

We were all very happy when EDDIE and HUIJUN came over the past weekend, and RACHEL didn’t shy away from them.  She would have started crying at the sight of their entering our home, normally.  We were all pleasantly surprised on that Sunday night when EDDIE joined us for dinner and RACHEL played happily with them too.  If only that continues to happen everytime now.  =)

FELIX is able to lift his head up to see things when he is lying on all fours now.  The next milestone for him is to start crawling, perhaps?  =)

YEN is lying on my lap, fast asleep.  Poor girl is so tired from taking care of our two terrors and making sure that my mum and I are happy.  She has caught the flu bug again and just took the flu tabley, hence the sleepiness.  I’m trying to help her in as much as I can, but I can’t do anything when our children cries just at the sight of me…

FELIX is better recently.  At least I can pacify him when I carry him in my arms and he falls asleep.  The only problem after that is how to get him off me - he wakes up again at the slightest movement when you try to put him on the bed and cries a lot again, sigh.

At the doctor’s suggestion, we are trying to let FELIX try to lie on his tummy and entice him to left his head up (must have strong enough neck muscles), as well as using his arms to push (poor boy doesn’t really know how to do that yet).  He is showing progress, though - his head is lifting up to look at us in the "prone" position.

I’m sure RACHEL understands a lot more than she shows us by not speaking to us.  She knows how to get the remote controls to us so that we will play her the cartoon / educational VCDs we bought her; that she needs to retreat back to the sofa when I pause the CD as she is too near to the TV; understands phrases like "sayang" someone and strokes the person’s head / body lightly, etc.  I do not know why she refuses to move forward and talk to us.  I’m quite sure she is capable, if she tries!

Sometimes, RACHEL can be the death of me.  Her inability (or is it reluctance?) to speak to us baffles me.  Sure, she does the normal baby talk.  And boy, she is eloquent in that!  Sometimes, I’ll try to hold her in my arms and show her words, repeating them a few times for her to get the sounds, in a bid for her to then repeat them after me.

I succeeded only once (I think I did…) when I was showing her the sign on her door that reads her name.  After my coaxing, she seemed to have said "RACHEL" once or twice, but when I realised that and tried to get her to repeat what she said again, I think she also became concious of her "speaking human language" and aborted whatever she did, turning away and refusing to direct her attention to me again.  How can I get her to talk?

We discovered more teeth than the eight visible ones (four on top and top at the bottom) in RACHEL’s mouth - due to her not cooperating, I could only catch a glimpse of two on her left bottom gum at the back of her mouth.  There should be more, but little RACHEL is just adament to keep it a secret from me at the moment.

She has matured in her motor movements such that she is now able to put her hand into open biscuit wrapper and take little pieces of ‘COCO CRUNCH’-like buscuits, and put them into her mouth to eat, one at a time (okay, sometimes two).  She is lying on the floor a bit these days for reasons we do not know; we guess that she wants to keep herself cool on these hot days?

YEN is on leave these two days and we took the chance to bring FELIX to SGH for his vaccination yesterday.  We took his height and weight - weighs about 8kg and is about 67cm long.  He is merely a little more than three months old - the paeditrician checked against growth charts to assure us that he is big for his age alright, matching up at about ninety-seven percentile of avaerage children.

Our Prince FELIX turns out to be a brave boy - he let out only a whimper after the needle was poked into his little thighs on both legs.  Atta’ boy!