Zhi & His Milestones

Zhi is now past 2 years old and I must say, he's achieved quite a few impressive milestones that neither WF nor I were prepared for. Frankly, he's very different from Ning in terms of personality, character and interests.

In the past four months, his developments were achieved at amazing speed. When prior to that, I was still worrying about his speech and learning abilities even though WF assured me boys are slower in their developments as compared to girls.

Now I am proud to say he goes to his twice weekly independent playgroup without crying like crazy for the 2 hours.

And I finally weaned him off his 2am milk feed, effective 1st Mar (that when he's 23months old!!!). He used to have milk at 10pm, 2am and 6am. I thought by 2 years old, he should stop this 2am feed. It took us more than 3 weeks of ignoring his cries/screams in the middle of the night and few times of argument whether to give in or not.

Here are some of the things he is capable of. Able to:
- Speak more than three words and in a proper sentence. Like 'xie xie ni" or 'How about you?' (the latter really threw me off the chair when he asked me).

- Verbalize & identify ALL the 26 big alphabets. And most of the small alphabets except the confusing ones like q & g.

- Verbalize & identify numbers 1 to 10.

- Verbalize & identify shapes like: circle (his favourite), triangle, square, oval, star, rectangle, heart and amazingly hexagon (don't ask me how he did it, it caught me by surprise too!).

- Verbalize & identify colours: orange, yellow, red & pink. Noticed these are common colours in a girl's items? Work-in-progress for other colours.

- Best of all, he can identify a lot of Thomas & Friends characters from Annie to Whiff. We ourselves weren't as good as him.

He's now showing some signs of self feeding but only occasionally. And totally refused the potty. I wonder how come this potty thing is such a huge obstacle for him.

Here are some pictures of him:
Going to school.


See how a Thomas & Friends VCD & a Mickey Mouse schoolbag can excite him so much.


Having a go at feeding himself to the cut watermelons.

Zhi & Thomas the Train

I supposed every kid has their favourite character at one time. Like when Ning was 2 years old, she was crazy about Hi-5. So much so we went for the show at the EXPO with her in 2007. Now she's into Disney Princess and to date, we've gone to two shows with her. Until the last show, WF said its enough "princesses" for him, he's not going to any more of these "princess" shows this year.

What about Zhi? Well, like a lot of boys, he loves anything that has got wheels: cars, trains, buses, trucks etc. Even books. He simply refused to read those animal or babies themed books which I had gotten for Ning when she was younger. And the cartoon character he can associate with wheels at the moment is Thomas & Friends.

During the March school holidays, we were crazy enough to drive for more than 30mins to Boon Lay to watch the Thomas & his Friends' performance at Jurong Point.

My my... My son is not the only kiddo crazy about Thomas. There were A LOT of other kids and crazy parents like us too!! We could'nt get a spot on the stage level so we were stuck to watching the TEN minutes performace from the 2nd level. Yes, drive 30mins to watch a 10mins performance. I must be out of my mind!

And for the 10mins, the only interactive character was the Fat Controller. Thomas was stuck to the floor and there wasn't any Percy nor James nor Toby. I am really out of my mind.



Nevertheless, Ning & Zhi were quite excited when they saw the Fat Controller and Thomas. This sort of make us feel the trip is worth the while after all.

I hope he sticks to Thomas for the next few years (kids of K1 & K2 are crazy about Ben 10 at the moment) because he's accumulated quite a lot of Thomas' toys at home.

Marina Barrage

By next year, the Marina Reservoir will be turned into a freshwater reservoir to meet 10% of Singapore's daily water needs. That's 114 million litres. And I didn't even know this reservoir is our 15th here.

We went over to the Barrage during one of the Saturdays and the place has a pretty nice view of the sea, flyer and city centre. So nice that we found a couple taking outdoor bridal photos there.

They have a lot of exhibitions that talks about water and recylcling. Its really like a "school trip" for WF and I. For the kids, I think they're too young to understand those information, charts and graphs. But nevertheless a good way to spend the Saturday morning for them.

I'm not sure if they still have these. But when we visited, we got free Newater. Of course, Ning and Zhi didn't know how these water was "made", so they had a fun time drinking it.

Zhi is TWO!

Yesterday was Zhi's birthday. And I think it was a "Thomas & Friends-filled-day" for all of us.

Before I had Zhi, I always wonder why kids can be so crazy about a blue train or about a purple dino. Well, now I have a son that falls for the former.

We started off his birthday celebration in Church's Sunday School. The Pre-schoolers' class sang birthday songs for him and we made imaginery candles for him to blow. Then Ning helped to give out the goodies bags to all the kids.

The later part of the day was when Thomas "invaded". Auntie Yo had bought him a Thomas the Train set. And we spent the afternoon assembling the train set and watching the Thomas Sing-a-long VCD.

In the evening, we had dinner at the Dragon Phoenix Restaurant (highly recommended) where he had his favourite Thomas-Annie birthday cake. He's dressed up in Thomas' T-shirt and gets presents like Thomas T-shirt and shorts set, Thomas swimming shorts etc...

My Sis-in-law even commented Zhi's got so much Thomas stuff. From water bottle, to shirts, to feeding bowl, to CDs.....

The sweetest part was Ning singing the birthday song, both in English and then in Mandarin to him, enthusiastically. Too bad, I was holding Zhi and I didn't video-taped it down.

Here're some photos and a video of his new train set. Thank you Auntie Yo and Uncle Vincent!

Zhi's Birthday Present

Science Centre Paper Flying Competition

Last Saturday marks the end of the March school holidays as well as the Science Centre Paper Plane Flying Competition.

WF saw on the papers that there was a going to be a paper plane flying show by the paper plane man, John Collins and decided we should go there for a Saturday outing.

As usual, Singapore is trying to break the Guinness Records. This time it is about flying the most number of paper planes. And we took part in this competition. First we learnt how to make the paper plane (not just anyhow and any kind of paper planes), then we try to fly it within the zones. Needless to say, we weren't "high flyers".

Then came the show. Where this man, John Collins, showed us many different kinds of paper planes and how each of them had their own characteristics. Like steady decent, gliding power and even a boomerang type of plane, where the plane will fly back to you (see slide show).

The highlight of the outing was actually participating in the various science exhibits in Mindfest 2009 which was also in the same hall. Done up by students from various schools and polytechnics, we had fun playing and making our own science work.

There was also this human board game that the ITE students organized at the outdoor area. Though there was a school competition going on, we still managed to buy a 50cent candy floss for the kids (a reward for their good behaviour).

Rainbow

It was actually Zhi who spotted the rainbow at the balcony. He was screaming excitedly while the rest of us were too engrossed in watching Disney Playhouse's screening of the movie "Mulan".

Of course, initially we had our doubts. How on earth can he identify a rainbow when he had never actually seen a real one. The closest he got to see a rainbow was thro the bathroom glass reflection on the toilet bowl seat cover every morning.

Well, anyway, he prove to us he can identify one, whether it is a real one or a miniature (from glass/droplets reflection).

I thought it was a beautiful sight. And whip out the camera to take a few shots.

Ning, on the other hand, was trying to impress us as well(obviously, we were impressed by Zhi and didn't pay much attention to her). So she kept chanting, rainbow is "God's promise after 40 days and 40 nights".

I think her Sunday School teacher will be proud of her. She remembered Noah's story of how God flooded the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. And after the flood, He created the rainbow as a promise never to flood the earth like this again.

Some Saturday Outings - Changi Airport

I find that our airport is more than just a place for departures and arrivals. When a local family with kids has got nothing to do or don't know where to go, they sometimes go to the airport to past time.

And our airport management had done a good job at making the shops and eateries all accessible to non-travellers. Thus, on weekends, you see a lot of kids and families hanging out at the viewing galleries, long queues outside Swensen's, kids playing at T3's indoor playground etc.

We were no diff. On cloudy days, we go there. And Ning always managed to find new friends to play with, especially outside T3's MacDonald's. And we can stay there for a few hours.

Since last June, I started to take on an additional customer service training assignment at the airport. And I found a new place. An outdoor playground and a stall selling cheap Zhi Char fare. They're located inside the Airport Recreational Club and the way to it is almost like a maze. When I showed WF, he was like... how on earth can a club be hidden thro' this door? Well, this club has got 2 badminton courts, a nice big gym overlooking the runway, jackpot room and karaoke lounge. Now you know its not all work and no play for the airport staff.