Lele's first play!

Lele went for his first play, "Tiger Loses Its Stripes" yesterday. The above is a picture taken with the casts. As this is a play meant for 2 year-old (and older) audiences, the mat which we were sitting on was packed with young tods like Lele and also many older preschool children. The casts did their best to engage the attention of their young audiences, but we could hear many cries from children who wanted to be somewhere else. As for Lele, he enjoyed some parts of the play. Even though he didn't sit still throughout, but he did very well by keeping relatively quiet and not disturbing others. I'm proud of him! I'll definitely bring him to another play but this play should be of a story he had read about, such as "The Gingerbread Man".

After the play, we went for some food. On the way, Papa and Lele played hide-and-seek.


Posing with Singa the Lion.

Lele was quite curious about this life buoy, because he has read about it from book, "Curious George" but has not seen the real thing so up close before.

Playing with Merlion water.

Barely minutes into play, Lele got wet through. The boy on extreme left started sweeping water at Lele repeatedly and made his clothes all wet. What was his daddy doing? Busy filming his oh-so-cute son splashing at us that he didn't even bother apologising. Duh... some people have the sense of a cow.

What mischief are you up to now ?

"I'll dip my hair into the water!"

Poorly taken because the Merlion was simply too big.

Trying to touch little Merlion's water fountain but it was too far away.

Looking at boats.

Lele's fascinated with rivers, boats and ships. Hope to bring Lele on one soon...

Bend the knees... JUMP!

Climb back up to try again, to the unamusement of papa.

Boy sculptures revisited.

On our way back home though the sky garden, Lele decided to carry our bag as his own. He liked to carry it on his shoulders but since his shoulders were too small and the bag threatened to fall off, he tilted his head to a the side where the straps are and raised his arm so as to keep the bag from falling.

Sat morning outing

Papa, Mama and Lele went to the Mcdonald's at Anchorvale Community Centre for breakfast. Even though Lele has a 3 hand-me-down (from Papa and Shushu) figurines of Ronald Mcdonald (which he calls Mr. Mcdonald), this is only Lele's 2nd visit to Mcdonald's. The last time we went to Mcdonald's for breakfast, we ordered hotcakes for him but he didn't like. He also refused to try any of our food. In the end, I had to buy some pastries for a bread shop for him. This time round, we bought something for him to enjoy while we enjoy our breakfast.
Here, Lele is eating his breakfast of "soon kueh". He loves "soon kueh", "beng kueh" and "ruo bo gao", so Mama and Papa bought "sooh kueh" from the coffeeshop before heading out. We bought 2 mini "soon kueh" (size of siew mai) at 60 cents each. SO EX condering that one sold at Koufu is only 80 cents. We even bought plain pancake in case these 2 mini "siew mai" fail to satisfy him.

After his breakfast of "soon kueh" in addition to 150ml of milk he finished before we set off, he had his dessert of Yoplait Mango Yoghurt which Mama brought from home. He loves Mango Yoghurt from Yoplait but will not even try the mango fruit. Some kids have the weirdest taste!

Papa and Mama had our moments of peace while Lele savoured all 125ml of yoghurt. Papa read his newspaper while I enjoyed my BIG breakfast. After he finished, papa brought him for some play at the Anchorvale river park nearby while mama read articles about Michael Jackson in the newspaper. He had died suddenly of heart attack the day before.

Lele fussed for some apple (which I brought from home as well) after he came back.

Walking on the chairs and pretending he is a train walking on the railway track. We are at the LRT station.

Papa and Lele playing a fool while waiting for the train to come.

Flu jab

Brought Lele for his flu jab yesterday (Fri). The flu jab is not compulsory but Daniel wanted all 3 of us to get the jab because he felt that in the case that we get at least we will be qui the flu, at least we can be sure that its not caused by the flu virus we vaccinated against. In light of the H1N1 situation not, he felt this is one measure we can take to protect ourselves.

We went to a private clinic near us. The jab cost $29 each. We didn't want to visit the polyclinic as there will be more patients there and probably more germs. Lele watched as I received my jab. He was fascinated. When it was his turn, he leaned over my shoulder to look at a toy an assistant brought for him. While he was exploring,the doc pricked him. He didn't see the needle going in as the doc injected his thigh, but he felt the slight prick and whined a little. The doc said calmly,

"Oh... what happened? A mosquito pricked you?"

Then she quickly whisked out a deflated balloon and a pump to inflate the balloon for Lele. Before he got over his happiness over receiving this gift, she brought many Thomas the Train stickers for him to choose one. These 2 gifts completely distrated him away from the injection! He only whined a little bit more when the doc proceeded to put plaster on the pricked area.

I told him that the plaster is needed to cover up the pain brought by the mosquito. He agreed with this explanation. He was pretty pleased with this doc:)

After the jab, my arm felt abit number and pain for the whole day till next morning. As for Lele he seemed just as energetic.

Playful Lele

Playful Lele has recently been resisting nap and bed time. See, we have storytime on the bed before nap and bedtime. Usually, Lele will ask for one book after another. We will read about 3 books before I announce,

"Last book."

He will pick the last book and I will read. After that I will put the book back on the shelve and switch off the light with him. Sometimes, he will request for another last book and I usually oblidge, because he will agree to lights out after that. But recently, after several "last book", Lele will still refuse to lights out. When I insist, he will protest. I'll just switch off the lights all the same (for bedtime). This will result in a few minutes of protest, which I'll ignore. Sometimes I'll carry him and lay him on top of me. He hates that and will go back to his own bed and for fear of the same treatment he will not fuss as much and drift off to sleep.

I wonder whether this resistance will get stronger? Anyway, I'm glad to be able to stand firm to that for now.

I also realised that Lele is able to drift off to sleep faster and sleep longer when I let him nap at 1-ish p.m.. Last time it was 12.30p.m.. He only nap around 1 hour (sometimes 50mins) and I thought that was normal. On a few ocassions, he nap got delayed till 1-ish and he slept for 1hour15mins.

Today he slept at 1. He has been sleeping for 1hour 45mins already and still in dreamland:)

I love mandarin

Since I was a wee babe, mama has been conversing with me solely in English except for flashcards and storybooks. Papa was supposed to converse with me solely in mandarin. But some things are beyond our control...

As I grew up, the only person who was consistent was mama, who spoke in whole and complete English sentences to me as far as she could. Yeye and nainai spoke to me in a mixed bag of English and mandarin. Shushu speaks to me in mostly English and papa started to speak more and more English to me too. Everybody found it easier to speak to me in English because I understood more of that and spouted mostly English. It is actually a vicious cycle. Since Mama is my main caregiver, spoke only English to me and loves describing things in lengthy details to me, I naturally understood more English than mandarin.

My English word bank expanded. I understood many things and responded well when spoken to in English. But when spoken to in mandarin (by nainai and papa), I sometimes ignore or responded back in English. Hence nainai, yeye and papa used more and more English and less mandarin with me, because they thought I will understand better.

Mama started to get worried that I will take to 1 language more than the other. She feels that Mandarin is far more complex to master. It will be a great pity if I lose the interest in the language from a tender age due simply to lack of exposure. She urged papa to use mandarin as he was supposed to. But it was easy for papa to forget. Most of the times he spoke to me in English, simply because it was more fun since I was much more expressive in English than mandarin.

Seeing that I enjoyed GUG mandarin lessons (only 20mins each time, twice a week) and was eager to learn new words, Mama decided to converse more with me in Mandarin. She did not want to start talking to me in Mandarin as she worried this might confused me. So she used storybooks instead. During storytime and GUG mandarin time, she will speak wholly in mandarin to me. This proved effective because I picked up many new words and sentences! Now I can converse in mandarin mostly in complete sentences with nainai on my own accord because I know that Mandarin is her strong language. I enjoy mandarin storytelling with mama alot. Each day will not go by without a chinese book.

Penguin-fish game

Mama made a penguin-fish game for me which I really like because it is something new. The objective of the game is to train my fingers.

Can u see the little penguins riding on the fish? They look like they are playing and having a good time, but according to mama, they are actually eating the fish. See, the penguins are in fact paper clips shaped like penguins. With my pincer grasp, I needed to clip each penguin to a fish. To mama and my dismay, the clips proved too hard for my pudgy fingers:(

I was more interested in taking the penguins off the fish and doing other stuff with them, such as letting them sleep by making them lie down or putting them into a blender (which is actually a big toy milk bottle) and shaking it violently to make penguin juice.

After a far bit of play with the penguins, I took a rest on the floor and posed;)

Jellyfish

Hi, my name is Orange! I'm a jellyfish made by Mama:) Look how cute I am.

Hi, I'm Green. I'm a jellyfish too. Lele made me with all the patience a 2year old tod can master (about 3minutes). Don't you think I look so cute?

Upside down

For some reason, Lele has been really interested in looking at the world in another way recently. He will do go upside down and ask, "Where is Lele?"

I'll play along and say,"Hmm, I wonder where Lele is."

Then I'll ask,"Is it there?" and give a squeeze to his bums or thighs.
He loves to play this again and again:)
Sometimes, in order to avoid a squeeze from me, he'll quickly show his face to me and say, "There!" when I ask, "Where is Lele?"

International Museum Day

Brought Lele to the Asian Civilisation Museum on Internation Museum Day (31stMay). On this day, all admissions to museums are free. The place was super packed with people, with the majority queueing up to visit the Kangxi emperor exhibition. In the end, we did not join the queue and instead just watched a video on sports with origins from China. Then Daniel brought restless Lele for a walk along the river. He was gone pretty long so I went to look for them. It turned out that Lele was so fascinated with several sculptures of boys getting ready to jump into the river. He kept saying,

"Want to touch boy sculpture penis!"

Above is a picture we took of him in one of his countless assault of poor boy sculpture. Just look at the twinkle in his eye! He even insisted we touch too, haha! When I refused, he pulled my hand and "forced" me:p

Lele just couldn't keep his hands off the boys.

Trying to get me to touch the penis of one sculpture.

We only took a few pics because Lele was mostly at the river:s. There were also too many people in the museum and too hot a weather for snapping. Above is parting shot taken of Lele and his da4jiu4 before we headed to Chinatown for dinner.

Picture of Lele, wai4po2 and wai4gong1 on our walk to Chinatown. Lucky Lele was carried in different arms all the way to Chinatown (1/2 hour walk). He fell asleep on Karen's shoulders and woke when we arrived at the destination.

National Blood Donors Day

Was invited to the Birdpark with Weiqin and her daughter, Xinle. Blood donors (Weiqin's husband is one of them) get 2 complimentary tickets and subsequent tickets are only $8 each. Other perks include free lunch, drinks and fruit (Fuji apple which Lele ate as lunch because he fancied nothing else in the lunchpack).

As can be expected, the place was swarmed with people. Actually, I had not known about the Blood Donors promo. Had I known, I would probably not have lugged Lele all the way from Punggol to Jurong, just to squeeze with the crowd. Lele did not fully enjoy himself too as he were still "recovering" from our stay at Sentosa, which included many delayed naps and late nights for him.
Having said all of the above, I think it was nice to catch up with Weiqin after such a long time:) It was a pity we did not take many pictures as we were both caught up in running after our active children.