mother-toddler bonding

just read on dr. ducan jefferson's blog that poor mother-toddler bonding was linked to teenager obesity, because these kids lacked a secured pattern of attachment, which may develop an unhealthy way of response to stress later in life (read his post here).

i must make sure this does not happen to us.

christmas 2012

the three generations of men, standing next to a musical santa claus, in the christmas evening of 2012.

fast developing language skills

a visit to a toy store just outside the supermarket.

only a day after my last post about him being able to say two syllable words, he spoke his first four syllable word, which was "qing wa wang zi" (the frog prince in cantonese).  and since then, he's been speaking almost everything.  he copies everything we say, and he now speak short sentences!

last night, we watched the "gongfu panda 2" trailer on youtube, and he kept on saying "gongfu panda", "gongfu panda", until he fell asleep...

by the way, he speaks a mix of english, mandarin and cantonese.

HK Ocean Park

we went to the hk ocean park in september, and i forgot to record it here.  it was a very nice day.

alan can say the names of most of the animals, like "monkey", "penguin", "dolphin", "panda"... all those two syllable words.  he just copies whatever we say!  so cute!

two syllable words

over the last months, alan has learnt to speak many many two syllable words - real words, not just ones he makes up himself (and he keeps making up words, too, multiple syllable words in that case).  he copies everything we say!  it's really funny!

alan's toilet trained

i don't have a photo for this, but at 19 months of age, alan is officially toilet trained.

he is able to tell us in advance that he needs to wee or poo, and he is able to wait for us to quickly take him to the bathroom and take off his pants before he does the wee or poo.

well done, alan!

alan can draw a circle

omg!  alan is able to draw circles at barely 19.5 months of age!  

look at the above picture - the two dark ones on the left are what i drew, and alan follow suit, and drew the two smaller ones next to my circles, and all the rest!  

i don't know about other kids, but just the other day, my mom complained that i couldn't draw a circle at the age of 3, so i just think, "whoa!  alan is so much smarter than i!"

lucy's 29th birthday

it was my birthday last wednesday, 28th Sept and to my big surprise, bryan got me a kindle!  whoa!  i'd been wanting to get a kindle ever since its release like almost 2 years ago.

alan grabbed the knife with lightening speed and tried to cut my cake.  but i, the birthday girl, had to do the first cute!

here's alan enjoying mom's birthday cake.  he loved it!

and after he made a mess on his face, everyone wanted to have a picture with him.

as far as i could remember, this was the first time i spent my birthday with my mom.  

first time swimmer

last weekend, we went to the suburb of nansha, 1.5 hours drive from guangzhou (or canton) cbd, to visit my dad for the mid-autumn festival.  and on sunday, grandpa drove us to this newly opened five-star hotel, where we dived in to this beautiful pool!

at just a bit over 18 months, alan went swimming for the first time in his life!  hooray!  he really enjoyed it!

look how happy alan is!

and what was dad pointing at with this funny face?

father & son

sleeping baby

a perfect view from behind

and i love every bit of it!  lol!

alan's new blocks

there has been some time since my last post - i had been too sick with my 1st trimester pregnancy to do anything other than vomiting and sleeping.  but i should record some progress of alan's growth and development as soon as i feel well enough.

so above is the block that alan built by himself a few weeks ago.  isn't that quite a step from his first block (see post here)?  i'm a proud mom!

here the smaller block is built by dad bryan.  em... i guess he has some catchup to do.  lol.

a few more milestones

it took 3 days to completely wean alan, and he slept through the night (from 10.30pm to 8am) on the 3rd night, and has been able to sleep through the whole night till 8 or 9 the next morning ever since;

a few more words added to his vocabulary: "lanyard", "作者" (pronounce "zuo zhe", meaning "author" or "writer" in mandarin), and i think there're more but i can't recall right now - will add to the list later.

unfortunately though, we have a fever today.  :.(  i'm not sure whether it's because of the weaning, or that he's growing a new teeth, or what else.

please get well, dear baby alan!

bald bald bald

we went to the hair salon yesterday, and have alan's head shaved!  how cute he looks!

it's a chinese tradition to shave newborn babies head several times - when they turned one month, one year, and any other time you want.  it is said that they will grow better hair after shavings.  true or not, i have no idea.

but alan no longer looks like a baby with a bald head.  he looks a toddler.

bryan missed alan's baby hair, though.  he kept going on and on about it last night.

15 months milestones

my dear boy has added a few more words to his vocabulary.

"a yi" - "aunt" in mandarin;
"duo xie" - "thanks" in cantonese;
"bye bye" - that's the same in all three languages, mandarin, cantonese and english.

and he's now growing his 9th teeth.

14 months milestones

time to record a few milestones of baby alan:

able to walk by himself by a bit over 14 months (and that's bryan in the background video taping him walking for the first time on the night of 28th of april)

added a few more words to his vocabulary

"ya" (which is "duck" in mandarin), and 

"wolf", which he can pronounce very well and enjoys saying very much.  he also learnt to say "lion", although pronunciation is still baby-like and he only says this word occasionally.  did i mention that he could say "tiger" as well in earlier posts?

blowing and climbing

this picture was taken on 28th march, showing alan blowing a whistle and successfully.  i really should have posted this picture earlier.

he's become a lot more agile since turning one year of age.

he climbed into this plastic washbowl and sat there to play.

and into this cardboard bucket.  tricky.

pasta with bolognese sauce

alan loves meat!  the small pasta helps babies use their jaw muscles to chew.  these are the same muscles that help them speak.  pasta is an ideal food for teething babies.

what you need:
1 tsp olive oil; 1/2 small onion; 1/2 carrot; a small pinch of ground parsley; 1 bay leaf; 125g minced beaf; 1 tomato; 1/2 celery stick; water; 1 tbsp pasta

let's cook:
1.  finely chop the onion, carrot and celery stick.  skin and finely chop the tomato;
2.  heat the oil in a small pan over medium heat.  fry the onion, carrot and celery for about 2 minutes, then add the minced beef and fry until brown;
3.  add the tomato, water, bay leaf and parsley.  cover and cook for 15 to 20 minutes over low heat.  stir occasionally.
4.  puree and mash the sauce.  
5.  cook the pasta according to package instruction.
6.  mix the past and the sauce and enjoy.

building a few blocks

we bought alan a bucket containing100 pieces of building blocks.  i had difficulty building anything at the beginning, a matter of lacking imagination i guess. 

but after a while, i managed to build this little thing above.  it's my first building block in over twenty years, or if my memory didn't fail me (as i can't recall the last time i ever played with building blocks), it could very well be the first building block i ever built in my life!  wow.

as alan knocked down my first building, i quickly built a second smaller one.  this looked like a robot though.  :)

with some encouragement, alan started to stack up some blocks, too.  here he had three, and i remembered that he made it to five or six.  could this be considered his first built block?

go for a walk

we went for a walk this morning, with alan's new baby-walking-assistant.

one year old, and alan still need to hold on to something to walk or stand - his legs are not yet strong enough.

the other boy in the far background is 6 months older than us, but alan is bigger and taller than him.  :)  i know i shouldn't compare and every child is beautiful, but i can't help being a little proud.

we picked up some pink flowers,

and immediately became a big hit with the ladies!

apple

we were reading last night, and i as i pointed to an apple in the book and said the word, alan copied me and said "apple"!

a few milestones

by 11 months, alan can say "mama";

by 12 months, he can say "mama", "baba" (dad in madarin), "nai nai" (which meant both grandma and breast, and when alan says it, he means the later), "mao" (cat in madarin) and "bird".

sometimes alan speaks in his sleep - he says "ma ma" in such a sweet and soft voice!  i love it.

reaching 1 year

time flies.  alan's one year old.

and this is him a year ago, when he was born.  he was so tiny then.  look how much he's grown!

now he eats his birthday cake!

almost 1 year

alan is 11 months old now.  he's lost a bit of weight recently.  can't say i'm not worried.

what would you do?

a big "thank you" to people who left comments on my last post.  i was very depressed when i wrote it.  not because of what the in-law said, but because my husband didn't understand me - not only didn't he say anything to make me feel better after the event, he cold-wared me because according to him, i shouldn't talk back when his mother was yelling at me and calling me names (rat, whore etc...)

i'm curious though, what would you do when your in-law yell at you and call you names?  and when she's doing it non-stop, keeps on going on and on when you try to stay calm.

what the hell

Brandy said she could not imagine how hard it was being knee deep in a culture that does have many people doing what I do.  She was wrong.  I wasn't "knee-deep".  This culture that considers stay-at-home moms worthless is all the way up to my eye brows.  I feel I may die any time.  But then, I have to survive, I have to live on.  My baby is so small.

My so-called "mother-in-law" labelled me a rat today.  Because I do not work, I do not earn an income.  According to her, all I do is sleep and eat - eating through her son's hard-earned money.  She said I was worthless, useless and all I ever contributed was birthed a son, which any women could do anyway.  She said that had I not met his son, who knew what "thing" I'd become.  She said I wasn't any good to his son.

thank god day

on the 26th december 2010, (the west's boxing day, although we didn't celebrate here in china, and we didn't have any presents to unwrap), we went to the huangdaxian temple to thank the gods for their blessing in year 2010.  it's bryan's family tradition.  his mom does it every year.  since we were in china this year, we went along, too.

this is me on the steps leading to the main building.

and here's alan and his mom in front of the main building.

can you see the big incense burners behind alan in the far background?

bryan and his younger sister, praying.

i'm not sure what these red stripes are for.  good luck, most likely.

okay, that's it for the day.