Pretend play

You know your 3 yr-old is ready for preschool when his most exciting weekly entertainment is the gardening team who comes by to service our neighborhood. He's obsessed with mimicking the many 剪草師傅 (gardeners) whenever he gets a chance....

Made a backpack leaf blower out of balloon art from a clown :

But then he thought the balloon 唔夠似 (doesn't totally resemble the blower) because it's not "open", so off came the grip of his putter which has a hollow shaft and makes a much more believable blower:

Well, there's always one guy on the gardening team who trims the edges of the lawn, so his golf iron takes the role of an edger:

He'd make the leaf blowing sound and pretend he's gardening with whatever is around - even when he's in his PJs and ready for bed:

Twins

This photo was snapped very casually, no posing or pre-planning whatsoever - notice how both boys had the same gait, lip-smacking expressions, and were attracted to the same thing in the same direction ?

Yellow Ladybugs

Whereas Katrina gets to hang out with bunnies, crickets, tadpoles, butterflies, and praying mantises at school, the extent of Nathan's daily interaction with nature is to water plants and pick flowers from the backyard. Imagine his awe when I caught him his own "can" of 4 yellow lady bugs that he can pick up and look at all day long.

啟蒙喇

Being the younger one, Nathan is of course always mimicking Katrina and has picked up a lot of the nuances of her speech like 係咪? 吖嘛, 喇, 呀,喎, 咁. I had wondered if they might reverse the leader and follower roles at some point.

He's finally shown that he's his own little person when one day he was playing with his fingers and had a revelation and exclaimed happily "爸爸 ! 好多triangle !" Katrina thought it was interesting and did the same hand gesture and chimed in with the "好多triangle" saying for a few blocks.

It's probably a silly thing to blog about but Katrina's grown so fast that I really don't remember how she went from barely babbling to thinking and speaking so maturely now. I really have to work less and relish spending them with these kids more before they grow taller than me....

大力小BB

After a long hiatus, (flus, computer trouble, ridiculous work hours etc.) we're finally back online. This video was actually taken before Nathan's birthday so it was right around the time he got really sick, otherwise he's actually a lot stronger ! He wasn't 2 yet so techically still a baby, but he sure looks quite big and is pulling about 1.25 times his own weight

終於識叫媽咪

For months, Nathan would only sound out objects that are phonetically "B-ish": 波波, 鼻鼻, 拜拜, 包包 (麵包), 爸爸, bear bear. The rest were all 嗰個. (Another favorite everyday word was 跌咗.)
After calling me 爸爸 forever, Nathan finally started calling me 媽咪 a couple weeks ago. Not that he couldn't pronounce the "M" sound before - whenever he was frustrated, he would go mamamama (媽媽聲) - maybe I should be glad he never called me 媽媽 and went straight to 媽咪 and didn't associate me with the sound of frustration ?

表情多多

Both of our kids have very animated facial expressions - here are a few of the many recent Nathanisms we captured:

...等我諗吓點樣整蠱媽咪爹哋先

啊!!! 笑啊啊就係咁樣咖喇

嘻嘻, 你咁識引我笑呀

唔, 你嗰樣都幾得意喎

吖呀, 乜嘢嚇到我咁驚!

嘩! 嗰度有啲嘢好特別,係乜嘢嚟嘅呢 ?

大頭仔

Nathan had his 15th month checkup the other day. He's still growing right along the 50th and 75th percentile curves for weight and height (ever since birth). His head, however, has been growing progressively bigger and gone from about 90th percentile from his 12th month checkup to a whopping 97th now. (For those of you who'd like to check on your kids' growth from time to time without having to wait for a doc visit, here's the link to those charts they show you: www.cdc.gov/growthcharts

I don't remember what size his head was at birth, but I think it was just kind of average. Thank God for programming him to grow slowly into his current head size - can't imagine how much tougher the birth and postnatal experience would have been if his head was at 97th percentile at birth !!!

怕草的啟示

其實小朋友成日教我好多嘢:

Nathan雖然好怕草,但係佢又願意試吓摸吓. 好驚咁,但係周圍望吓,見到其他啲得意嘅嘢,好快又會笑到擘大晒個口, 開心到咩咁。

其實我哋好多時唔開心或者焦慮煩惱,都可以學吓小朋友,望吓周圍或者望遠啲,話唔定好快又會畀我哋搵到啲令到我哋笑到見牙唔見眼嘅嘢嘅噃。

See the video that showed me this insight:

怕草 Video

Multi-Tasking

Nathan has always been a non-stop baby. He's actually slowed down a lot in this video because he has yet to master his walking skills. This video epitomizes I guess not just his busyness but ours too. Here he is learning to walk with both hands full, reads a map, dials a phone with pot in hand, learns to turn around, finds lost equipment, and continues cooking. Reminds me of how many tasks working moms juggle throughout the day. The other day I had to be on a conference call during which I had to pick up Katrina - had my cell on speaker and mute while asking K about her new teacher, making a turn, shifting gear (don't ask me why I'm still driving a stick), and all of a sudden had to scramble to unmute to answer an unexpected question from Philadelphia....

Busy Boy Video

Sleeping through the night

This is a very rare photo. Whereas we have tons of Katrina's funny contortionistic poses, we haven't really dared to take any of Nathan's sleep pics. In fact, we were scared to even tiptoe in to check on his room temperature ever since he woke up a few times right after the door was opened and took forever to go back to sleep. Katrina was much nicer to us - she would go 12 hours straight without a peep when she was 3-4 month-old.

Although Nathan was right on time on his other milestones, he sure took his time on this one but at least he finally made it ! It was probably partly my responsibility as I ALWAYS fed him when he cried in the middle of the night. Since he's over 50th percentile in weight and I'm like in the negative range, I always assumed hunger as he wouldn't take any supplemental bottles like his sister did. Right around the 9-10 month mark when he was eating a lot of solids, I started thinking he couldn't really be hungry and refrained from feeding him automatically although it was always the quickest and surest way to calm him.

I still remember the night of "the turning point." I was so tired I actually didn't hear him cry at around 2-3am (Jonathan usually does but didn't that time either) When I finally did hear the screaming, I remember this out-of-body experience of trying to get up - it was like I was floating above and looking down at my exhausted achy body and trying to wake it up but couldn't. Magically, after a while, (didn't even know how long), the crying stopped !!! No feeding or other intervention necessary ! So we started letting him settle himself for a few days and lo and behold - he's sleeping through without needing to nurse !

Although he still cries during his sleep on days when he napped poorly and I still have to go in and soothe him at times, he's definitely a much better sleeper now. Maybe I can finally pay back my own very deep sleep debt one of these days......

嘟嘴

From time to time, Nathan would make this funny face that would always elicit a smile from me. Although Katrina also had a very wide range of facial expressions, she's never made this one before - so I've been wanting to take this picture for quite a while. But as most moms know - by the time you pull out the camera to capture a moment, kids are usually onto their next thing - so I was glad this time I got it.

Super baby

Nathan sustained a 4+ ft fall from his crib 2 days ago . I'm still stunned and the whole incident still surreal. Fortunately, Dr. grandpa was here to check him over and declared he appeared fine although he then told a horror story of kids that seemed fine at the ER but stopped breathing the next morning due to undetected brain hemorrhage. Even though my mommy instincts also told me he was probably fine after he still managed to smile while I nursed him a few mintues after the fall, I still couldn't sleep well that night of course.

For a short while, I was tempted to give our trusted nanny a hard time for forgetting to pull up the crib gate. Instead, I decided to be gracious and tried to comfort her when she profusely apologized. I realize I've already been quite grumpy lately from prolonged sleep deprivation, but life is too short to be mean ! This incident really reminded me how fragile life is and how I probably don't spend enough time enjoying Nathan. I had little energy left from nursing, working, and other care giving basics to all 3 kids (hubbie included) that I often don't just sit down and marvel at how cute and strong my baby is. He often pulls himself up with one hand and had actually been "walking" around his crib at this early age. Being a second-time mom, however, I no longer marvel at all these important milestones, yet he still deserves every bit of attention and wonder and excitement as a first-born !