Picking up Daddy...

We picked up Daddy at 7.30am at the airport today!! Caden was still on his pyjamas. We go straight right after he woke up.

Caden loves to look for Daddy behind the glass window, that's why I brought him along everytime we can.

@ 22 Months

...with his favorite merry-go-round...

A Miracle

A miracle had happened today! Caden finished the whole slice of koko eric's birthday cake and part of mine, too. Considering he is a very fussy eater and doesn' take any snacks at all (except Cherrios), this is indeed a miracle.

No more food, pleaseee....

Caden is on strike again...

He would only eat a few spoonful of his dinner porridge (bare in mind he don't eat lunch). But when we ask him if he wants fresh milk, he quickly ask for one and finish about a cup of it and a half-boiled egg.

Then, after taking a bath, he would drink about 330ml (or more) formula, before he goes to sleep.

The most amazing thing is (quite a few people also said the same thing), he look chubbier each day...

At Emi's bday party

Learning the A B C

I have been trying to look for a way to teach Caden A B C (or rather anything). He couldn’t keep still even for a moment. He would be running around the house by the time I said, “this is the letter B.”

So since Caden like to do puzzles so much, I thought buying an A B C puzzle will do him good. He would learn the A B C and doing something that he likes at the same time.

Hopefully with this, he would learn to recognize the alphabets.

Crazy about Puzzles

I introduced puzzles to Caden a few weeks ago and since then; Caden has been playing with the puzzles a lot. I mean really A LOT! I have to buy new puzzles almost every week as he will get bored playing the current one since he could play with one for up to 5 times a day or more.

This Noah puzzles is one of his favorite now. It’s a 22 piece floor puzzles and he can do it all by himself.

Puzzles are good for children. When children work on puzzles, they are actually "putting the pieces together" in more ways than one. Puzzles help children build the skills they need to read, write, solve problems, and coordinate their thoughts and actions—all of which they will use in school and beyond.

And the most important of all is they keep Caden busy for a while. Hehe…

So Brave...

This are considered very tall slides (especially for children). Suster never dare to slide down. I tried it a few times and there were always a tingling feeling when we slide down.

Caden, on the other hand, never been put off by the height of the slides. He just slide down without much thinking. And he is doing it again and again.
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I think children are much more fearless than adults. I remember when I was young, I could ride a roller coaster ride a few times, but now...NO WAY!!! Even if someone pay me to do it, I don't think I will do it. ^_^
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In this picture, Caden was trying to persuade cici Abigail to slide downwards by pointing at the slides and saying words that none of us really understand. But in the end cici Abi was hooked on it and actually slide down ...maybe... 5 to 6 times.

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All thanks to Caden and his persuasive words and actions!

Always HAPPY at school!

at the children's pool

This is where Caden will be when I couldn't swim due to the monthly thingy. I always hate that day. But today, I saw Caden was enjoying himself playing at the children pool with cici Abigail and mei mei (Abigail sister).
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In less than two weeks, I will be leaving for US. I hope Caden would not miss his regular swimming time with me. I would be very happy if he could swim with someone else when I am not around, though, but oma (my mom) and ii Ali (my sis) both hate to swim!

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Oh well...

egg egg egg...

Every dinner Caden would say: "Mommy...egg egg egg....pis"

I have closed one eye on what could half boiled egg do to his body, some said it is not good to give a young child half boiled egg as one could get salmonella disease from it.

But a lot of time Caden refused to eat his dinner (FYI, he is not taking any lunch), and he will be screaming so loud, letting us know that he doesn't want to eat at all. But when he is given his once a day half boiled egg, he dramatically changed to be an angel. No more screaming, no more throwing things, no more crying...rather, he would look closely to the bowl of the half boiled egg, and a lot of time he would grab our hands to make sure that we won't take that away from him. Then he will eat it until it is totally finished 'till the last drop.

Of course after it is finished, the screaming start again! Now, he would ask for more. And everyday I would say, "Sorry Caden, mommy forgot to buy more egg today. I will buy for you tomorrow, ok?"

And of course he didn't buy the excuse...and keep screaming for more...*sigh*

If only we could give a lot of half boiled egg to a child per day. It would make everybody super happy.

PS: I have given him half-boiled eggs since he was not even one year old. Click here to find out more.

Soon, he would teach me how to do things his way...

Emotional mommy...

I cried last night and this morning! In TWO weeks time, I will have to leave Caden in Singapore for TWO weeks! And now, I felt that he might not be ready for it (or rather...I am not ready to leave him yet.. ^_^)

Although I know that there is still an option of bringing Caden along with us, I also want this trip to be just about Paul and I. After all, he is only home on the weekends for the past 2 years, and when he is home, he would give more of his time for Caden => I only get a small portion of it hehe... which is fine! I agree that Caden needs it more than I do.

Anyway, so I am actually looking forward for this trip together with my husband, if only I don’t have another wonderful little man in my life.

Caden has been acting up pretty bad since last week. He suddenly gets so easily annoyed with everything. And when he is, he would showing it loud and clear, whether by crying or by giving tantrums.

He hates it when we ask him to change his clothes, his pants, take out his old diaper, put on new one, then put on new clothes and pants – there will be tantrums in every single one of them.

*sigh* How tiring!!!

It’s totally fine with me if I am not planning to travel. I believe this is just a phase that every child has to go through in life. I am very sure he will gets over it very soon. But why now????

The worst of all is, Caden seems to look for me more often this days. I have been teaching him to sleep with his nanny (not with me anymore) since around February this year. And it has been successful so far, until last week.

He suddenly asked for me right before he sleep, cried hysterically if he don't gets it, and he wakes up in the middle of the night, crying hysterically, demanding me to sleep next to him for the rest of the night.

I cried last night when he was actually sleeping on top of me (while I am lying down on the bed). He never was like this EVER! He never acted like 'he is going to loose his mom' for the first one year of his life when I sleep on the same bed with him all the time. On the bed, there was always some gap between Caden and I. But now, he is like glue to me when comes to sleep. There has to be a part of our body that touch or else, he would say “mommy mommy,” making sure that I am still next to him. Sometimes he would sleep on top of me for hours.

I cried because I feel that more than anything, he needs me to be beside him to help him go through this stage, but at the same time, I am really looking forward to spent more time with my husband.

I am torn apart.

But I come to a solution that if GOD wants me to go on this trip, there will be something that makes me confident to leave Caden alone for two weeks. And I am sure if GOD wants me to go, he will definately watch over Caden for that two horrible weeks (for me).

AMEN!

Soaking wet!

The weather has been so bad this past few days or sometimes Caden gave tantrums in the morning, therefore, we have not been able to walk to school for quite some time.

I can see that Caden miss his morning walk. He has been asking me to walk around the house on his stroller and one time, insisted us to ride in his stroller when we were only going to visit our neighbour in the next building.

So I thought I gave him a surprise to walk on cloudy Thursday afternoon. Little that I know that it's going to rain very very soon. We were only out for about 5 minutes when the rain started to pour and it got really REALLY heavy a few seconds after that.

Luckily Caden was in his stroller, he was saved from all the wetness, but Mommy and Suster were soaking wet!

Lesson to learn: Never to walk again on cloudy day in Singapore! The weather here can get very unpredictable.

"fish..please..."

We went to Takashimaya today. A lot of time when we are here, we like to buy Japanese fish-shaped bread before we go home.
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Caden has been looking how the aunties makes the cake for countless times.

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And today, ONLY today, when I asked him if he wants one, he said, "iya" (means: "yes'"). So I bought two, one for Suster and one for me (as I don't think he would ever eat it -- I suspect, he would just touch it for a few seconds and gave the fish back to me).

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I let him sit in his favorite stroller (read: a shopping cart -- Suster suggested me to buy one of this instead of the Maclaren stroller that we have), ate the tail of the fish and let him played with the rest of it.

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I was quite shocked, but all giggly and excited, when I know that Caden took a few bites on it. He ate about hm...the whole tiny mouth shape of the fish, quite a lot for someone that don't eat anything like that at all.

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[He is still not eating any snacks except for Cheerios cereal that is quite difficult to find here in Singapore]

Imitating others...

Socks was not something that Caden would consider a nuisance, until he saw his friends pulling it out (and eventually sock-less) in class.
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He is definitely in the stage of imitating others. I must contantly watch out my action and words from now on!

Daddy's Time

Every time Daddy is back from anywhere (Dubai, Bangkok, Vietnam, Shanghai, Hongkong, Jakarta, etc) is always cherish by Caden. It's the most important day of the week for him.
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He loves his dad so much. Caden would look for him during the weekdays when Daddy is not around. Playing Lego is (sort of) one of their special time. They could spend hours building something out of it.

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Therefore when Daddy is not around, Caden would sit by the pile of Lego and said, "Daddy, duduk!" (Daddy sit down). And I would only be able to remind him that Daddy has to work and he had told him a few days before about it. Then I would distract him with something else, such as asking him what we are going to build today.

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Of course Mommy's creation is not as good as Daddy's who had his degree in Architecture. I think that was make it more special to him. Caden would look attentively what daddy is going to built this time and it always turns out to be soo nicee....

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This week, they are building a huge zoo, just like the Singapore Zoo, complete with the tram, the driver, and the people who is waiting outside the tram, also all the animals: a giraffe, 2 monkeys, a panda, an elephant, a horse, and a crocodile.

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After that the three of us went downstairs for a swim and of course, Daddy was so impressed with Caden's swimming skill.

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Then we went out for an early dinner at 5.30pm at Din Tai Fung, Paragon.

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Fuih...what a wonderful day for Caden. Today, Daddy never leaves his sight. Caden would look for him when daddy was not sitting next to him; Mommy was not important anymore when Daddy is around.

Understanding: Fast & Slow

This month would mark the 18th month of Caden attending classes at The Little Gym. He has graduated twice since then; from the 'bugs' class to the 'birds' and now he is in the 'beasties' class.

At almost every class, we would do this huge colorful parachutes activity (with different arrangement depending on the age, of course). And every time we do this, we would shake the parachutes FAST and then SLOW for a couple of times (nowadays, we would run FAST and then SLOW while holding it).

But apparently Caden only get the REAL concept behind it after today's class.

He was so fascinated by it that he would shake his hands FAST while saying "fasss...." and then shake them slow while saying "shooo..." [He was doing it for probably 50 times today] ^_^

I hope, now, he understand when I told him to do something slower. But well, deep inside my heart, I know that it would be hard for him to follow, what I called, simple instruction at this very young age.

Soon soon... Just be patient, mommy! ^_^

What is terrible two exactly?

Ok, so I heard a lot about it from friends but never really experience it until last week.

Caden get easily annoyed nowadays. He would be so angry if we told him to take a bath while he is just wondering around the house. He would cry hysterically when we told him to change his clothes for school. He would push us away and keep saying NO (a lot of times) to show that he doesn't want to do what we want him to do, even before we have the chance to say it.
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Everything is a NO for this little guy!

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But honestly speaking, I feel that his tantrums and difficulties is not as bad as the story that I heard or read. I am not sure if I am actually more relax about this terrible two thingy (because I come in prepared for the worst) or I have helpers to help me with him. Hm...I think it's a combination of that two.

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[That reminds me!... This Idul Fitri (or Lebaran), Suster is going back home for 2 weeks... TWO WHOLE WEEKS! and Caden is not in his best shape!! Well, I am sure we will be okay (with a little mess here and there), and not to forget a Bible verse that says "I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthen me!!" (Philippians 4:13). Hihi.... Indeed I can!!!]

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Back to the terrible two. I hope this wouldn't get worst. I feel bad when I saw him crying or asking for something that we don't understand. I am sure he doesn't really understand what's going on, too. He feel something is wrong, something is not right, something has to be done, but now sure what!! That's what explain the tantrums and sadness.

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Though I know that this is a phase and almost all kids are going through, I pray this will be over very soon.