Congrats to all new mummies and new mummies-to-be!
Thanks to the "wake up e-mail/sms" by KC and LL, I'm back! It's been a hectic few months with me working day and night and neglecting my lil' pumpkin. She said to me today: "Mummy is a goodbye girl" and I just felt so bad. I hardly have any time for her and when I see her for a few seconds in the day before I rush off, she only hears the all familiar "Bye Bye Baby. Mummy's gotta go to work now." I wish life could be normal for me, but things never seem to turn out that way. *sigh*
I glanced through the archived pages and saw how all the babies here have grown. Most notably, Steffi, Declan, Dean and Cindy look so much bigger now! Alas, JinJin still looks the same. Do you guys have trouble getting your babies to eat? My maid tells me that JinJin takes hrs to finish her meal, if at all. She either avoids the approaching spoon or she'll spit everything out. When you ask her what she wants to eat, she'll tell you "Keropok!" She's surviving on crispy, deep-fried food, ice cream and anything not nutritious. She takes after me!
Dentally, she's rather slow. Still no molars yet.
Mentally, she's doing quite ok. She used to be such a silent baby (no cooing or babbling until she was about 10 mths old), so much so that I thought she was mute, but she's talking fine now. It seems as if she skipped the cooing and babbling stage, and went straight into the talking and reading aloud stage after she turned 1. She understands English, Chinese and a smattering of Bahasa and Teochew, and enjoys translating from one language to another.
She's got quite a good memory. Sometime before National Day, she pointed to the sky and said "Helicopter". I asked her what that was in Chinese and she couldn't tell me. I gave her the answer once, and when I asked her the question 3 days later, she could tell me accurately. Recently, my dad drew some shapes on her magnetic board and she could answer "pentagon, trapezium, parallelogram". Her lack of teeth doesn't make her pronunciation great though...
She's very cheeky. When we tell her not to do something, she'll do it intentionally, then smile and say "Purposely". Yesterday, I left my cup of water on the coffee table. She rushed to it, drank from it and spilt the bulk of the contents on herself and the table. My maid shouted "Naughty JinJin!" and JinJin answered "No, no, big mistake!", laughed and ran off.
She kicked her tutu habit several months ago. Diaper-wise, she's still not toilet trained! She'll let us know if she wants to poo, but not when she wants to pee. TBL, help help help!
Have you guys started your babies on playgroups or playschool? JinJin's still attending Shichida classes, but her class has shrunk from 6 to 3 kids and the other mummies aren't keen to continue. I'd like her to have as much interaction as possible with other children, so I thought a playgroup or playschool would be more suitable. Does anyone have any recommendation for such groups or schools?
We'd love to join you guys for the Botanic Gardens outing. My vote goes to 4 pm Sunday. Will there be a picnic? If you guys bring the food, I'll bring the wine. For the mothers-to-be and lactating mothers, I'll bring something else. Will bottled green tea do?
As for pix, I haven't got any recent ones to share. Jen, sorry, I know you've been waiting for the pix which were taken at the last gathering. I've reminded my hubby many times, but he's an infamous procrastinator.
On a rare occasion when my hubby and I had a pocket of time on a weekday, we took JinJin to the beach at Desaru. My goodness, that place is such a ghost town now. Many of the resorts have closed and we were the only people on the beach, which was nice.