Getting fussy

It has been so fun lately hearing you learn to try converse and getting your thoughts across. However, as you grow older, you're also becoming more demanding, and wanting your way. Some examples:

- wanting to choose your own clothes (can be a battle in the mornings)

- refusing to wear certain shoes (we have to hide the sandles)

- eating only the 'meat' and not wanting the potatoes or rice (even nursery commented that you don't eat like you usually do)

- refusing to bathe or sleep (putting you to sleep can take up to 2 hours!!)

But overall, it's a joy.

New toys

After talking to a few friends with kids, we realised that you actually do not have many toys. You have outgrown a lot of your 'baby toys' now. So, in the last months, we bought you a drum set, a train set, and many cars (to replace the lost bus, which we can't find in the shops).

You were never really impressed by the train. The train track has however become your car track and you love it

Errmm.. should this be your toy?

Bus 'accident' in Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden - I never knew it was surrounded by water and consists of many islands

We had our first holiday away as a family (excluding going to Malaysia) in Stockholm a few weeks ago. It was unexpectedly and exceptionally hot!! You kept saying 'hot, mummy', 'hot, mummy', 'no more hot' intermittently when walking along. Poor you, it was probably hotter than Malaysia, without air conditioning!! It was a different holiday as places we visited had to be 'child friendly'. So, we went to the world's oldest open museum, Skansen, with a zoo, and the 'hop-on-hop-off' boat trip. Think you enjoyed most of it. Thank God for the new pram, as we would not have survived without one :) I have to say, everything was so expensive, and the food was not to die for. For the first time, you had 'outside food' 5 days in a row. Don't think you complained as it was sushi, nuggets, salmon, chips, and it probably all tasted very good with the salt and 'ajinomoto'.

'Hot, hot'

The heart-wrenching moment of the trip was when you lost your favourite bus. We flew with Ryanair, and as there were no allocated seats, we half ran with the others to the plane to make sure we could get seats together (full flight). You were holding on to both your car and bus while we were walking. We were on the plane at our seats when I heard you say 'oh-oh, no more bai (bus), drop, hand', a few times, while pointing to your hands. You may have been saying '0h-oh' all the way but I didn't hear. Then, you cried, 'no more bai'. Even I felt sad, while I tried to explain that it is lost, and we'll try to get you a new one. We tried to look for it, but with no success. Oh well, like your daddy said, it was a 'teaching moment'. Unfortunately, I don't even have a picture of the bus to put up for memory :) (ooppss, did find a few when sorting out photos)

The fateful bus

Our only family photo - outside the famous vasa museum (of course we didn't go in)

The only 'cool' day

The world's oldest open air museum

You obviously preferred the big horse more than the small horse

Hop-on, hop-off boat sightseeing tour

First friends in UK

It was good to have our longest friends in the UK, visit us all the way from Dundee. It seems surreal that this may be the last time we see each other in UK. As usual, you are very very happy when there are visitors, especially if they are children. Similarly, this means that there were no longer nice dinners, and chatting the night away like student days. Rather, we had to think of places to go to keep you all entertained. So, we all went to Farmer Ted's. To be honest, I think the adults had a good time too, although the weather could have been better.

Our birthdays

Both our birthdays came and went quietly. I suppose not many people celebrate birthdays after 30?

During mine, Richard's pastor and husband from Malaysia were visiting us, and volunteered to babysit, but celebrating without you just didn't feel right. So, we all went out for a nice Italian meal (another italian birthday ;)). For Richard's, we went out for his favourite food, Sushi (I forgot the camera). Are a mixture of us, as you love pasta and sushi, or do you just love ALL food? ;)

Sudden word spurt

In just about a month, you went from hardly saying anything to constantly babbling to yourself and us, and certainly getting lots more confident with talking. You can now count 2-6 (not sure why you refuse to say 1), although you can certainly say 'one more', know your colours red (your favourite), blue, yellow, green, black, pink, purple, and recognise 'O', 'A', and 'B'. You also command 'mummy sit down', and point to objects and shout out, eg: bird, pink 'wowwer' (flower), TV, big dog, and 'yed' (red) car. Excitedly, you will call out, yed car, blu car, yed car, car, 'bai' (bus), car, again and again when you pass them. The maximum words you string is 4 (eg: dada one more please).

It's funny to see you saying big in front of everything. I suppose everything is big to you? But when you see a few together, you will go 'big star, big star, small star, big star', pointing at each as you decide whether they are big or small. It's also amusing how you use your limited vocab to convey a message (eg: You say 'more down' when going downstairs to tell us that there are more stairs to go down). Hearing you communicate really do sometimes makes us laugh till tears in our eyes. I am still trying to teach you your name.

Surprise visitors from Malaysia

This is the first time your gong gong and popo made such a last minute trip to UK. They bought the tickets on the Thursday and flew that Sunday itself to arrive on the same day :) They really must have missed you.. Hopefully they had a good holiday too as we sure had a good time.

Some things that we did:

Annual kite festival in Wirral

Loving the bell on the train in the fun fair

Taking strolls and getting swung while walking

We then spent a week in London (I went along as I had a course there), visited your friend Isaac also, and you went to the London zoo without me (boy, you've been there before your mummy and daddy)

Your idea of a big fishes - penguins

The farewell game of peek-a-boo was fantastic, thankfully there was no crying involved this time