Why? Why? Why Mummy?

Why is it so dark? Why (are) we going home? Why? Why? And this is coming from a 2 year (+ 3 months) old toddler!!! I thought that he is starting his whys a just little early!!!

A typical conversation goes like this:

kf: where are we going?
m: we are going to eat dinner.
kf: we are going Macdonald's
m: we are not going Macdonald's
kf: not?
m: we are not
kf: why? why not going Macdonald's?
m: :P

Whatcha sayin' Babe?

Kiefer's speech and vocabulary is expanding by leaps and bounds everyday. He adds on so many words to his vocabulary and says so many new things everyday that I'm finding it hard to keep up. Even as I type this post, I am thinking that I will not be able to recall every little new word or phrase that he has recently started using.

He started by calling almost everyone "mama" a couple of months ago. Mostly, he just yells "mama!" whenever he needs anything. Over time, he managed to evolve the "mama" into "mama" or sometimes "ah ma" for grandma and "ma-my" for mummy! :) He knows how to call almost everyone, i.e. Kor Kor, Daddy, Gong Gong (tho it does sound a little like Kor kor sometimes), Po-po, yi yi, Gu Gu, jie jie.

Some of the words in his speech:
car
watch
house
bag
shoe
water
ball
school (s-kool)
turtle, giraffe, zebra, lion, bird, hippo (pa-po), rhino

He is also attempting phrases and often string words together:
mummy's bag
mummy's shoe
kor kor school
red car
blue car

On the whole, I think this little boy is really talking a lot!! We remember Kieran speaking a lot less at the same age. I guess being the younger child does have its effects. Kiefer needed to express himself a lot more and "fight" for more attention unlike Kieran, who being the only one for the longest time, never needed to really ask for anything. Whatever the case is, I'm really happy that this little boy is speaking up so much and that I know that I'll soon miss this kiddy mispronunciations once he masters his speaking.

Kieran says...

in the car...

mummy: later you finish nai nai you gotta go sleep ok?

kieran: no. kieran work!

mummy & daddy: *eyebrows moved up* :D

mummy: do you have work to do?

kieran: *seriously nodding head* Yes. 

hahaha... 

a quick update

a quick update on Kiefer:

1. a second tooth has sprouted. bottom front. it seemed to have just popped up overnight, 2 nights ago! that probably explained the cranky-drink-milk-nip-me-all-the-time syndrome. :P anyway so he now has 2 (lower) front teeth.
   
2. he now generally eats cereal for lunch and porridge (millet + white rice or brown rice) for dinner. the carbo is usually accompanied with 2 cubes of vege (either 1 green + 1 orange or 2 cubes of broccoli). just started him on some pork today.
   
3. every weekend (sat and sun) he has 1 bottle of formula (Enfalac) in the morning. 4 scoops + 120ml of water.
   
4. leopard crawls very well and can sometimes lift his abdomen up and do a proper crawl.
5. can move a sitting position from lying down on his own.
6. does the "plphooophst" (blowing raspberries) (with tongue sticking out sometimes) whenever he is angry/displeased/ doesn't get whatever he wants. :P

update on Kieran:

1. his language is increasing by leaps and bounds. he has now promised to "3 year old birthday, throw bottle, drink milk from cup and go toilet!" i actually taught him to say "go potty" and thus was surprised when he said go "toilet" instead!! haha. he now counts 1-13 in Mandarin too! he is starting to speak in phrases and attempts to form sentences. e.g. "xie xie daddy bring wheel!" (aka thank you daddy for bringing me to the flyer)
   
2. he'll ask to read some books before bed every night. and the some would mean all the books lying around next to his bed. and that's easily 5-6 usually. sometimes we are guilty of not reading with him cos we are just so tired. :(. have to try harder mummy!
3. he is really happy in school. no more "no school". when asked if he wants to go school. it's always yes! :D

Kieran says...

Kieran is still not very proficient in speaking and so I am not always able to find out the things he did in school for the day. I tend to use whatever little knowledge I have of their activities in school and try to ask leading questions. So this is what I do everyday when I pick him up:

M: Did you have fun in school today?

K: Yes!

M: What did you do?

K: play school (or sometimes he doesn't reply)

M: What did you play with?

K: ...

M: Did you go to the gym to drive the car/ sing song/ draw etc?

K: Yes!

M: What did you eat in school today? (depending on the day of the week) 

M: Cornflakes? Porridge? Bread?

K: No porridge. Bread.

M: What did you drink? Juice or water?

K: Juice

M: What juice? Apple or orange?

K: Apple Juice

So usually it is a hit-and-run kind of situation. He'll answer yes/no to my questions and sometimes he'll be able to actually tell me the stuff he really did.

Last night, over dinner, I was talking to him about school again.

M: What is your teacher's name? Miss..?

K: Miss...

M: Miss Jaslin

K: Miss Jas..lin

M: Do you like Miss Jaslin?

K: Yes! 

M: Does Miss Jaslin sing songs?

K: Yes!

M: What about Su Lao Shi?

K: Su Lao Shi, Zao An!!!

M: :P

Then I showed him 1 finger.

K: yi!

2 fingers.

K: er!

3 fingers

K: san!

M: =D =D =D

I didn't expect him to do 1, 2, 3 in mandarin! We always taught him in English. Looks like his mandarin has got some hope afterall!!!

No more... xxx

Kieran has a bad habit of licking his fingers and smearing saliva all over his fingers recently. So we tell him if he does that again, we'll put la-la (chilli) on his fingers. So whenever he does does that we'll go "Daddy (or Mummy)! Bring La La!!" and he'll go "No more la la!!!" And we'll pretend to scramble and run to the fridge to get the chilli sauce and then have a good laugh about it.

The "No more xxx!!" extends to almost everything actually. e.g.

Dinner time

M: What do you (Kieran) want to eat for dinner? Noodles?

K: No more noodles! No noodles!

M: Sushi?

K: No more sushi!

M: Pasta?

K: No more As...ta!!

M: yes , pasta

K: No Yes!!

M: ??? :P

My name is...

... Seashell Amy Choo Training!!

Haha... just had to blog this down. We were teaching Kieran our names, i.e. What is Mummy's name? What is Daddy's name? And when it came to my name, the Daddy had to go confuse Kieran with the word sea shell. Yes, he knows what a sea shell is, and when i break my name up for him, is able to pronounce each syllable "Mi-shell" but when you ask him what mummy's name is, he'll go "Sea-shell"!! haha..

Also, he is still not very good with vocalising words and whenever he cannot pronounce a syllable, he'll substitute the syllable with "A" e.g. A-mouse = mickey mouse, A-bra = zebra. When you ask him to say "mummy" syllable by syllable, he'll be able to do it. But when you ask him to say the 2 syllables together, he'll always go "A-meee"!

The last part of the name came because Kieran always says" choo train" or "training" when he sees a train. (ok, he currently has the habit of adding "-ing" to his words. I think it started with the word 'swimming'. Then it became "training" (train), "fanning" (fan). It's quite funny to hear him say that actually!! Well, since my surname is "Choo", Daddy started the "Seashell Amy Choo Training"!!!

For the record, Kieran is starting to recognise colours already. He is quite sure of the colour red, orange, yellow and blue (in order of getting the colours correct most of the time).

Having fun with the boys.

My days have fallen into some kind of routine (which is good for the boys). Kiefer wakes up at about 9ish usually for his milk and then Kieran will wake up closer to 10am. Thus I usually get up a little earlier and that's when I get to surf the internet a little, then try to get some stuff ready for lunch. Lunch time is usually jam-packed for me. I either feed Kieran his lunch then feed Kiefer or sometimes when the timing is right, I'll get to feed Kiefer and then Kieran. After which both the boys usually settle down for their afternoon nap. 

Kieran nowadays can sleep for a stretch of 1-2hours. Maybe this is due to Kiefer sleeping next t0 him. Kieran has always needed someone to sleep with him, if not he'll wake up after a max of about 1hr. So this 1-2hr break in the afternoon is really precious to me. I'll either get back online, do some digital scrapping, some regular scrapping or if I am tired, I'll just nap with the boys.  I don't usually do housework with this time.. haha.. it's too precious to be wasted like that. Laundry is done usually in the morning before the boys wake or evenings when Les is home. Same goes with vacuuming the floor. Having said that, I think my vacuum cleaner's busted! :(

Yesterday, Kieran woke up and the first thing he said was "pain pain" and he pointed to his lip.

Today he pointed to this photo me les, me and josh and said, air-crem. At first I thought he was saying "aeroplane" but there was no aeroplane in the photo, the I realised he said "ice-cream" that's another new 2-syllable word that he can manage now. Then just now, as he was throwing a tantrum, he said "outside" and "inside" with the correct usage of both the words!! Usually he uses the same words for both the opposite meanings, like "open" (which he pronounces as "a-pen") for unbuckling his seat belt as well as to buckle, to open doors as well as to close doors.

Anyway, here's something silly about buckling and unbuckling seat belts. As Kieran is really small, most of his pants cannot fit well at the waist. So I bought him a belt to tighten things up. The other day, we went to a restaurant where the high-chairs didn't come with seat belts. Usually we belt him down so that he will not stand up in the chair when he fusses. That day, there was no belt and at the end of the meal, he whined for us to "open, open" and he tried standing up but he couldn't. He flipped his shirt up (usually the seat belt buckles get covered by his shirt at the end of a meal), held on to his belt's buckle and asked us to open. Hahah, he thought that that buckle for the seat belt's buckle!! And psychologically, he just couldn't stand up!! HAHAHA.. so after the episode, whenever we go to a place where the high chairs have no belts, we'll still belt him up with an imaginary belt whenever his has his own waist belt on!!