This morning, we left Sophie and Rose with my mother-in-law and visited our gynaecologist at Thomson Medical Centre. Dr Tan said XD is growing well and it seems our pregnacy is no longer "threatened". However, she wants me to continue with the hormone pills (reduced dosage) just in case. I lost some weight too, but no big deal. When we looked at the ultrascan, XD was moving and kicking about. So cute! There was a surge of maternal happiness in me that nearly got translated into tears. It lasted 3 seconds or so. For the first time since we found out about XD, it felt real. XD is real and growing in my womb.
Sophie's teacher spoke to me today about her progress. She said Sophie was curious and independent enough to explore her surroundings. She displays good attention span as she can sit through a "presentation" (activity) and put away the materials when told. She also have good imagination and awareness. Then she concluded that Sophie was quite advanced and mature for her age. And I was like YES! YES! YES! (inside my heart). Nothing beats praises from an external professional. She advised me to take advantage of her sensitive period to toilet train her. The chances of success are higher when the child is between 2 to 3 years old.
I know this was nothing new, but I would always be tickled by how Sophie's girly look. She even agreed with me that she looked "nice" today. Our new wardrobe and wall fixture are finally up and ready. We are slowly cleaning up and putting things back in order which explains the mess in the video. Once completed, Sophie would have access to the master bedroom again.
Unfortunately, she has got some kind of skin rash in the proccess (prob the dust and dirt) so I would need to sort it out tomorrow with her doctor (despite my own condition). I am super frustrated and worried now. The rash started as little red bumps (eczema right?) but it did not respond to steroid cream at all. I also tried Mopiko, Hazeline, aloe vera gel, antibiotic cream and even prickly heat powder. NOTHING worked. It has since become clusters and there are signs that they are spreading.
We tried to go without diapers for 2 hours yesterday. It was really funny. After she poo-ed and washed up, I put on her training panties and told her we must go to the potty to "wee wee" so she must tell me when she needed to go. 20 minutes later, she ran to the potty and sat on it so I thought maybe she wanted to pretend going to the potty. I played along, took off her panties and waited with her. Nothing... she started fidgeting and squirming so I thought it would best not to let her play on the potty too much. I helped her up, pulled up her panties and send her off to play with Ah Gong and Ah Mah in the playroom. AND that was when she let go. She obviously had never experienced peeing in her shorts before, so she panicked and started crying. Unfortunately, we were not not being very nice because we laughed out loud. We could not help it... opps! Oh well, Ah Gong held her while I quickly grabbed some nappy cloth to clean up. After we cleaned her up, I put on another pair of training panties for her. No accident this time although no success at the potty either. She endured until I put on her diapers an hour plus later. I thought it would be good to talk about potty use after she had some experience with "accidents".
Finally, we put together Sophie's Letter "S" Book. I used the "Ss" we had made last year for the cover. We included some of Sophie's art and craft, activities, fingerplays, poems and songs in the book. Based on my present condition, I do not know if we can continue making Letter Books. I will still try my best after my first trimester...
Some time ago, someone commented that our blog for Sophie was all about her education and learning and that set me thinking about the real purpose of creating Sophie’s World initially and Sophie’s Sketches now.
In the beginning, I wanted the blog to be the way of documenting Sophie’s life so that she could read about it when she was older. It was my way of letting her know how important she is to us and how much we love her. Soon, we got connected with other blogger mummies and exchanged ideas of childrearing and education. Eventually, our blog evolved into a journalistic documentation of Sophie’s learning and daily activities. I no longer include my own reflections in her blog as they are often too personal and negative.
I guess the main purpose of maintaining the blog remains unchanged although the style and format are no longer the same. I still want Sophie to read about her life when she is older; everything else is secondary.
I seldom let Sophie dress up because she is so particular about comfort that she will try to rip her clothes off. Today, she must be in quite a good mood...
We feel that we need to have a name for the little baby (even before we know its gender). We called Sophie XD which stands for Xiao Dan (little egg) then. But we cannot seem to get comfortable with any names so far. Finally, I think I will call the little one XD as well, but it stands for Xiao Dou (little pea). I like XD because it looks like a face laughing hysterically. I want my children to be happy always and never be like their mama who is ever so pessimistic and melancholic.
I have been really unwell so I could hardly do much with Sophie. We tried reading but we always ended up watching TV instead as I feel much better "flat".
We managed to complete our Letter "S" Collage. It was great to see how Sophie enjoyed naming the objects and pasting them onto the paper.
I also let Sophie practise writing the letter "S" on a DIY write-and-wipe sheet. Although she could not control her hand to write the letter, she liked it when I held her hand to write the letter.
Our colour this week is "blue". So far, we have not been very successful with colours and numbers. A little disheartening but we shall persist.
Our square ended up looking like that because Sophie insisted on touching it before it dried. Oh well, so long as she can identify the shape.
We made a last minute decision to create a snowman with paper plates. I thought of pasting sqaures all over the "body" so that it looked like "snow". However, Sophie was too impatient for that. She wanted to go straight into making the snowman's face. So, we did a symbolic collage on its body and quickly moved on to the face.
Sophie was eager to finish the snowman, but she kept making it difficult for me to complete it. In the end, I had to simplify everything and make its arms and the scarf from tissue paper and taped it onto the body. Of course, she also insisted that I should make shoes for the snowman (despite my protest).
We tried making a straw sculpture today with Playdoh as the base. Sophie was obviously more keen to cut the straws than to make a sculpture. Although she has started cutting with a real pair of scissors at Cherrytots, I am not quite ready for her to do it at home yet.
I cannot understand Sophie's obsession with birthday cakes. Everything can be made into a birthday cake, according to her.
Finally, she made a straw sculpture that she soon destroyed before I could take a decent picture.
Sophie has got a huge mosquito bite from school yesterday. It is really red and swollen. We feel very bad because this is her first mosquito bite and it is so bad. I have quite a few nasty bites too, but not as big as hers. I need to speak to the school about this. There are simply too many mosquitoes in the school compound. Anyway, I left Sophie with Ah Gong and Ah Mah after her lunch and made a trip to get her some ointment and insect repellent. By the time I came back, it was her snack time. And when she was done, I had to prepare dinner. It was amazing how little time we have... sometimes.
Fortunately, we managed to do some "S" based activities. I cut the letter "s" from a piece of cardboard to make a sparkly salt letter.
Sophie was so excited about the salt sprinkling bit of the craft that she was only willing to dab a little blue paint on the letter.
Letter "s" - Sparkly Salt
Knowing that Sophie was not quite satisfied with just making the letter "s", I let her do some more on her own. However, she wanted me to paint her hand and FOOT instead! Luckily I was ablt to distract her with the bowl of salt. I had to throw away her work eventually because the salt kept falling off and my floor was sticky as a result.
Sparkly Salt Art
Of course, cleaning up was tough. While I was washing in the bathroom, Sophie kept herself busy with the white glue and some paper cut-outs she found lying around. She came running to me when she was done saying, "Mummy, look! Picture!" . She was so proud of herself that I had no heart to tell her off for making a mess on the table and floor.
Sophie's Picture
In the afternoon, I was too tired to do anything else so I just read Sophie Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle. It is not an easy book for her but she enjoyed playing peekaboo with the transparency pages. She almost immediately fell in love with the lionfish... so cute!
After Sophie's nap and lunch, I felt totally exhausted yet we still managed to carry out some "S" Based activities.
We used Jumping Clay to create the letter "Ss" on a laminated template. Sophie was neither keen or good at it so I let her try with Playdoh instead. Still, she was seem more interested in squishing it instead.
Then, we made "sausages" with Playdoh and put them in a pan to sizzle. I recite the "3 Fat Sausages" as we played.
Finally, we also tried to string a pipecleaner through some pieces of straw. Surprisingly, she was quite enthusiastic after the initial reluctance.
Sophie was not very good with string giant beads but this seemed a lot more manageable for her.
I made it into a bracelet for Sophie to play since she is beginning to like "girly" stuff...
We set off to Cherrytots at 7.45 am in case there was any traffic jams. Papa stayed for a while to make sure we could settle in. Sophie had little problem exploring the new environment. There were many Montessori activities and manipulatives in the classroom so she was kept busy for the whole 2.5 hours there. The teacher was soft spoken and encouraging to all the toddlers so I felt obliged to speak gently to Sophie as well. I was particularly proud of Sophie when she could easily identify all the farm animals figurines and match them to their pictorial counterparts. She even made the animal sounds as she matched them. Just before we left, I talked to our mentor briefly about my pregnancy and my intention to enrol Sophie in the Pre-Nursery by July. So, we will meet up and discuss how we can incorporate that into our learning objectives of Sophie in Cherrytots.
Immediately after her craft work, Sophie began to play with her 2-piece puzzles. She is getting quite good with putting puzzles together although she does not necessarily have the patience to do it properly or "gently". At one point, she was trying to force fit the "carrot" (suppose to match with "orange" piece) and "rabbit" (suppose to match with "furry" piece) pieces.
And when she fitted the "alligator" piece to its corresponding texture piece, she began to put her arms together and "snap" like the mouth of an alligator. She even wanted me to stop my camera to do it with her.
After all the excitement, I wanted her to slow down so I took out the "red collage" and introduced the colour "red" to her. She is still not very good with colours so I hope to work on that more.
During morning snack time, I made Sophie a strawberry & banana smoothie. She did not really like the taste but she was very keen on drinking from MY mug.
After we cleaned up (she spilt my smoothie!), she decided to cut up some "vegetables" and "fruit" to make a "salad".
Then out of nowhere, she found my piggy bank with 12 $1 coins in it. So, she kept dropping them in and taking them out. Of course I tried to get her to count as she did it.
After Sophie's nap and lunch, she spent some time with Ah Gong and Ah Mah. They played, sang and watched TV. I took the opportunity to get my materials ready to make her a "snake".Once Ah Gong and Ah Mah left, I took her back to the room and drew her a circle on a piece of construction paper. I left it on her learning board so that she could look at it all the time. I was going to let her paste circle labels on the "snake" to reinforce that.
For the "snake", I rolled 3 pieces of green construction paper and cut slits on the centre piece before attaching them together. Sophie seemed to know my intention as she tried to insert the "head" and "tail" to the "body" for me.
The moment Sophie got her hands on the labels, she started to peel them out and stick them on the "snake" very efficiently. Of course, she could not resist playing with the "snake" for the rest of the evening. She even insisted that I must hold the "snake" like a puppet.
Snake
Just before the day ended for Sophie, we put up all the pictures of animals and objects that begin with the letter "S" on the self-adhesive board.
We are starting "Letter of the Week" again with the letter "S". In our last attempt, we made a snake (animal) and soup & steam (object) for the letter S. This time, we made "S" with shiny and sparkly materials. For the shiny part, I cut up some aluminium squares and colour the metallic side with markers. And I will let Sophie use glitter dust for the sparkly bit.
I added some red into the white glue to add more colour to the background. Sophie was definitely eager to brush the glue on. She knew that it was used to stick the aluminium squares on and hold the glitter dust.
Although Sophie understood why she had to wear the smock, she still abandoned it when it started to irritate her. She was quite happy to sprinkle glitter dust everywhere and when we had to stop, she looked disappointed.
That was why I gave in and let her have her way with the leftover glitter dust. I was glad to see her scribbling on the glitter dust with her fingers. Time to introduce her salt box again.
Recently, I have received a "complaint" that I was not very clear about Sophie's new blog and some of my readers are getting really restless because I have not been updating Sophie's World. Actually, Sophie's World has been replaced by Sophie's Sketches since 11/12/2009. So, everything about Sophie, her development and learning will be posted there.
Although I have not been very actively posting there, I really intend to do so asap after my other domestic affairs are taken care of. At the moment, I am waiting for my paperwork for a foreign domestic helper to be approved. And I will have to buy stuff she needs and start training her to work independently once she comes to our place. Also, Sophie is starting her playground programme on Tuesday so I need to settle her in with the new schedule. Then of course, there is my pregnancy to worry about. With so many things in my "TO DO" list, I can only try my best to update the blog.
However, I will be very active again once things are in place so do keep me in your blogroll (under Sophie's Sketches) and continue to support me! And it will really mean a lot to me if you join in as my follower in the blog (very encouraging) even if you are anonymous. Thank you so much!
