WFMW - How My Son Learnt To Blow His Nose

Hubby-jr, my five year old son, inherited his daddy’s nose albeit a sensitive one. This makes him terribly prone to a runny nose. I have tried many, many times to teach him how to blow his nose and have failed almost every single time. There was a moment or two where I thought he got it but nah, the next time he needed to clear his nose he just sucked it in rather than blow it out (ooohh). Somehow he just couldn’t get it.

That was until two days ago.

His nose was acting up again and it was getting just plain gooey. “Wipe it off your face with a tissue please and throw it afterwards! Do not wipe it off with your hands!!” Get my drift?

Anyway he obeyed me and soon afterwards he developed his own tissue game. And whaddaya know??! This game taught him how to blow his nose!

First, take a piece of tissue paper.

Next stuff it into the nose, just like this.

BLOW and out comes the tissue. (Sorry we couldn’t catch a shot of the tissue hanging in mid air.)

Ta da! Easy Peasy. He now knows how to blow his nose and if he forgets I’ll just stuff tissue up his nose! For more tips and such please head over here.

P/S: No icky stuff was dislodged in this demonstration. All gooey thingies were properly cleared beforehand.

Helping With The Dishes

Since the turn of the year, Little Missy dropped her late morning nap. This means that I have an active toddler for the whole morning! It has its fun side, she’s my little companion (shadow?), accompanying me while I grocery shop, run errands and even go on fun downtown trips (after Hubby-jr goes to school). When we’re not out, we enjoy slow mornings at home.

I’m cherishing these precious bonding moments with her as next year she’ll be attending playgroup sessions for 1½ hours in the mornings. (Sniff, my baby is growing up.)

The flipside is that she can sometimes (more than sometimes?) demand more attention than I can spare. It can be pretty annoying, not to mention a test of my patience especially when I’m trying to get the house chores done. She’ll keep yelling, “Mommy, come. MOMMY! COME! COME!!! MOMMY!!!” Yes, 2-year olds can be very persistent and often suffer temporary memory loss of the terms, No or Wait. “Later” to them means, a second later!

So I was so glad to stumble upon this “trick”. She now “helps” me wash dishes after lunch almost everyday. She’s happy just playing with water, soap water. Occasionally she “washes” a cup or bowl (plastic or melamine ones). Ya, well it is more of over-washing them in soap water…

It is brilliant. She’s happy and I hope she eventually does help me with real washing (one can hope right?). I get the dishes done and best of all, we have our bonding time over the sink!

Yes, this is how I do it. A dining chair, a sponge brush, a plastic bowl and some soap water (I usually give her more, she’s almost done in this picture). And oh yes, she usually needs a change of clothes after this. Next I’m getting her an apron!

Nintendo

Hubby and I love books and we spent quite sometime at Bras Basah that day. How on earth did we manage such a feat with two little kids in tow? Especially since Hubby-jr simply hates any kind of shopping.

He starts his chain of complaints the second I (or hubby) as much as glance at something. That never fails to drive me up the wall. So to avoid this we’ve resorted to:

a) NOT shop (I can’t avoid this ALL the time!)
b) Tell him to be quiet or else…
c) One of us brings him somewhere where he’ll be happy (i.e. toys section)… (but what if there is no “happy” section for him?)
d) Bring one of his toys along… (a toy car works but we’ve lost quite a few.)

THEN during our trip back to Malaysia we discovered a very effective on-the-go babysitter…

A little too effective?!

Yup, it’s the outdated Nintendo gameboy. We borrowed (permanently?) it from our sister-in-law (who has since upgraded to a PSP) as an “emergency weapon”. The emergency being our 5 year old going “out of control” restless on a 5-hour long bus ride back to Malaysia! Well the emergency never occurred (he was so well behaved) but hubby introduced it to him anyway.

Needless to say Hubby-jr took to it like fish to water. He is hooked.

Well it’s not too bad (yet?) as we’ve confined this activity to only weekends. He’s still attracted to other of his favourite activities even with the gameboy in hand. And who am to complain when it keeps him happy while we are happy shopping!

So is the Nintendo a friend or foe? A friend, I say (at least for now).

P/S: Hubby insists it helps with his hand eye coordination and helps him fit in socially… (yeeeah, oooookaay…)

Malaysian National Sport

When in Malaysia, play their national sport. What else? Badminton of course.

Err… I can’t say if they have a natural talent for the game… but I think they can strike a pose or two. What do you think?

P/S: I bought this kids’ badminton set (2 steel rackets and I foam/plastic shuttlecock) at TESCO (a hypermart) for only RM4.90 (that’s what? SGD2.30?) Unbelievably cheap right?

H2O = Happy Kids

My kids LOVED their stay at my parents’ house. Just a backyard, some plants, a small water pool and lots (LOTS!) of water made them very, VERY happy. (I too was VERY happy. Happy, self-occupied kids, what more could a mother ask for?!)

Well, this is what they did almost every morning (and sometimes evenings too).

 Watering poh-poh (grandma)’s plants.

 Playing in this small water pool.

Incredibly they didn’t seem to get tired of this tiny pool. In fact they couldn’t get enough of it!

NO, this wasn’t ALL they (we) did during our 10-day stay. There were other stuff too. But that’ll be in another post. I’m still catching up on our laundry!

P/S: Yes, dearest, DEAREST hubby had our computer resurrected! God bless him. Did I mention how much I love that man?

Sometimes small and simple is good enough

1 Thomas & Friends Cake

2 Large Oishi Pizzas (and 12 yum-delicious chicken wings)

2 Close Friends (who’ve known each other since 4 months old) and their little siblings (that totals 5 children guests)

2 Mommy’s “motherhood” friends

That was what I whipped up in two days for my son, Hubby-jr, to celebrate his birthday. And that was all it took to make him a very happy boy.

My son is turning five tomorrow.

I was mulling for sometime in May as to what I should do for his birthday. Organising a birthday party on a weekend was one of the ideas I had. BUT when the holidays started (almost 2 weeks ago) I ditched the idea. You see, I was just plain too exhausted. It’s my first time winging a holiday with 2 kids without my parents (yup, they usually visit during the school hols). We (hubby and I) then decided to just bring him for a movie on his special day.

B-ut… then… just two days ago my friend asked if we’d be celebrating Hubby-jr’s birthday and that led me to ask my son what he wanted to do for his birthday. Would he prefer his friends coming over or going out to watch a movie? Without hesitation and with much excitement he chose the former. So I called his two “babyhood” friends’ mothers that evening. Next day I brought him to choose his cake. This morning I called for pizzas. And that was that, we had a mini birthday celebration.

It was great seeing him brimming with excitement in anticipation of his friends coming over for his birthday the last two days. To think he was once afraid of parties. He has really grown.

“Thank you mommy for preparing for my friends to come” he said after I spent some time in the morning getting the house and things in order.

“I really enjoyed my birthday (party) today,” smiling as he told his daddy over dinner.

And that was all it took for this mommy-fied woman to think and feel - it is all worth it. Being mommy-fied isn’t so bad after all. 

My Girl and Shoes

It is apparent that my darling Little Missy has inherited my shoe fetish genes (which I’m sure is not unique to me and plagues most women)!

The telling signs appeared when she just about 18 months, she tried on shoes along with me at the shoe department one day. She jumped out of her stroller (after she saw me trying on my third pair of shoes), took off her shoes and signalled daddy to pick shoes and help her try them on!  (Mommy was obviously too busy…)

Dear Hubby just shook his head and blamed mommy, yeah moi. He thinks she picked up the “bad habit” just from observing how gleeful I looked whilst I was trying out shoe after shoe after shoe. What can I say? Trying out shoes for fun is one of my “hobbies”. Sometimes I end up buying them, often I do not.

Anyhoo, the fetish is here to stay (with Little Missy). But mind you, she has a mind of her own. She determines which shoes she likes and which ones, NOT.

These fake pink crocs used to be her favourite. It was her “default” going out shoes although she had a good number of shoes. Then a few weeks ago I decided to buy her more shoes as her little feet were growing. It was not easy. She rejected MANY shoes and just wanted her fake crocs. “No! Don wan. Wan pink shoos!”

Unfazed, I pressed on (yeah I love shopping for shoes for my girl as much as for myself!) Finally she picks the cute blue flip-flops (with a back band). How did I know she liked them? She refused to take them off after trying them on?! Then she does a gleeful kind of skip out of the shop, squealing now and then! The same happened with the light blue denim and pink shoes (at another shop, another day…)

“Mommy, what are you doing to her?!” exclaims dear Hubby. Oops, he happened to be there when I bought the blue denim shoes and he saw her pure excitement over her new shoes.

Okay, so I like to indulge my little girl now and then (sue me!) The other of her two current favourite pairs of shoes are hand-me-downs (see! we’re not snooty, a shoe is a shoe, even if it’s not new). For the world of me I can’t figure out why she loves the spiderman slippers (see how worn out they’re getting), they are her “default” walk around the neighbourhood footwear.

Woah, this is a pret-ty long post about my two year old’s… shoes! Might seem like nothing but a load of fluff to some of you. Oh well, one man (woman)’s fluff is another’s fetish. Serious fetish!

P/S: She has other shoes I have not featured here.

It’s Mine!

“It’s mine!”

That’s what I’ve been hearing a lot lately from both my kids. Yup, the usual siblings’ squabble.

It’s amazing isn’t it, how a (once upon a time, not too long ago, sorely neglected) toy’s appeal increases exponentially the very second one child picks it up and decides to play with it. Before you know it, the other child wants to play with it too. Yah, and just as suddenly, the toy that they were playing with earlier is no longer “current”.

The grass is just always greener on the other side.

Anyhoo, the tussle over toys isn’t new at all. It started way back. What’s new though is that now my son (almost 5, speech delay) can declare, “it’s mine!” (It used to be just, “No, Mei-Mei, No!”) And my two year old Little Missy can counter that with, “no, it’s mine!” (Hurray! Her speech development’s “normal”).

Of course the “it’s mine” goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…
Add this, “Mei-mei (sister), you play with this (another toy).”
And this “No!!” Scream!
Then back to, “it’s mine” banter.

It is quite a racket. It can and does drive me nuts. Yet at the same time…
It is so good to hear those two words come out of my son’s mouth (and my daughter’s).
It. Is. Good.

I can never eat…

…papaya EVER AGAIN.

Little Missy loves the fruit and has been chomping up a lot of it the last two days.

Well, what goes in MUST come out.

The smell… (Oh. My. W…! THE smell!) The fragrance-before and the foul-after seems to have some distinguished semblance…

Even the colour of her “you-know-what” was “distinguished”.

…I leave the rest to your imagination.

Now every time I look at the fruit (the REAL fruit)… I can do nothing but ”imagine”.

I CAN NEVER EAT PAPAYA EVER AGAIN.

‘Nuff said.

P/S: You can blame hubby for this unappetizing post. I was sharing my thoughts on this with him when he cut me short with this exclamation… “Too much information!!! If you need to talk about it, don’t tell me, just put it in your blog!” 

Teaching “My” and “Your”

Even as Hubby-jr speech development is progressing well, he still lags behind his peers. One key problem area is in using “I”, “You”, “My”, “Your”. He frequently mixes them up or just refers to himself by name.

To address this, his speech therapist introduced these two activities. The second is a progression of the first.

First Speech Activity

She played a simple game in which she and Hubby-jr had to take turns. After playing for a while and Hubby-jr understood the rules of the game, she stopped and asked, “Whose turn is it now?” His natural reply was “his name” (if it was his turn) or “teacher” (if it was the speech therapist’s turn). She’d then intervene and teach him to say, “It’s Hubby-jr, MY turn” or “It’s teacher’s, YOUR turn”. She’d ask the question, “Whose turn is it now?” at every “turn” requiring my son to reply correctly each time before the game could proceed.

After he got the hang of this, he was taught to drop the name and just say, “It’s MY turn” or “It’s YOUR turn”. But she was the one always asking the question and all answers came from Hubby-jr. Back home I did this exercise with him too but with different games.

Second Speech Activity

As a progression, she played this very simple game with Hubby-jr. Sitting face to face, it’d start with her giving specific commands to which my son had to respond. “Touch my nose” (he’d have to touch the therapist’s nose), “Touch your nose”, “Touch my shoulder”, “Touch your lips” and so on (you get the idea). If he made a mistake, she’d repeat the command and guide his hand to the correct place.

After he got the hang of this, he’d get his turn to give the commands and the speech therapist would respond. The game then became one where both of them would alternate in giving the commands and always required the use of “my” and “your“.

This is quite a fun game which my son enjoys. I’ve played it a few times with him at home too.

Since the above exercises he is using “my” and “your” more although he still mixes them up at times and he still prefers to use names rather than pronouns.

Through the process of teaching him ”my” and “your”, I discovered that unknowingly I’ve acquired the habit of using “mommy” instead of “I” or “my” when talking to him. Slowly I’m undoing this and when I consciously change my sentences to use pronouns I can see that he too makes an effort to respond using pronouns!