Emma's toddlerhood #7

It has been more than a month since Emma has started playgroup and I'm so thankful that she is coping so well and becoming more independent. 

 

I went to pick up her from infant care one day and was so pleased with what I saw. The teacher was singing some christian songs to the remaining 3 and Emma was patient enough to wait till the end of the song and waved goodbye to all before the teacher released her. I glad that she is learning how to exercise obedience at this young age. She then come gave me a hug before grabbing her school bag from the pigeon hole and walked to get her shoes. She did them all like a big girl and I really can't believe how fast she is growing!

Statistics: Emma weighs 9.2kg at 19th month. I'm glad that she did gain a little over this month even though she had another mini food strike again. We thought was her teeth again but we didn't spot any yet, but anyway, she is back to her usual self again.

Emma is such a little vainpot! I was so shocked to see her patting your face when a piece of bread. Yes, she was putting on powder! She loves to dress up, carries a bag and even wore my heels!

Health: She was feeling fine other than a few days of loose bowel (which we thought was due to her teething). On the other hand, she also battled with constipation. She would had a hard time and break into big sweat & tears if she skip a day without any bowel so I am reminding myself to feed her more fruits and water.

Diet: Emma is eating alot more solid food since she started her playgroup. She rejected food after a few weeks of plain rice with steamed veg/meat so I am cooking soup and more flavored food for her dinner. She tried new food like corn cobs and lotus root. How I wish she could be more like me and eats everything! But she's definitely a soup (and bread) lover like me!

She has been self feeding solid food for a while and started to self feed soup lately, how scary i know! I would hold a piece of tissue below her mouth while she happily sipped away from the small bowl grabbed using her two tiny hands. 

We increased her last feed by a scoop to 260ml (4 scoops) as she seems to want more. Sometimes, I wonder how can she stomach dinner at 7pm (rice, dishes, soup and apples) and still ask for milk at 8pm.

 

Sleep: Yay, Emma has been sleeping much better with lesser waking up these days. Keep it this way, please!! She is usually in bed at 9pm and wakes up at 7am with a nap from 1-3pm. I'm really loving this as we all get a good break on weekends!

Social/Outing: We celebrated Chinese New Year and Emma had great fun interacting with the many relatives' and friends' kids. More here. She also explored IKEA and just can't resist to touch everything.

 

Activities/Milestones:

Emma has growing sense of humor. She loves to tickle and be tickled on her palm, body and armpits. Haha. She is laughs out loud a lot these days. She runs off when being chased and burst into laughters. She is so generous with her hugs and loves to hold hands of older brothers and sisters (so sweet, I'm sure she does that in school!).

We have a little chatterbox in training! Emma said her first 3 syllabus words with prompting - Banana which she used to say -nana. She speaks new words like hello, ah gong, ah ma, spoon, good, goat, magnet, school, soup, owl, pig, cheese, red, wall, tissue, open, 杯, 祷告, A, B, C, D, P, V. 

She is starting to string sentence: "mama., papa.." She was asking me where is papa. She asks people to come with her hands (you know, those usually come come hand sign). She sing along new songs like A, B, C and taps to music using her hands and feet. She also love to dance and spin around.

She has better coordination over her limbs and imitates us a lot. She joined us for some exercise with jumping, lifting her butts, kick her legs into the air when standing, reach for her toes, "pumping". She could also widen her legs so that we could wash her bottom. She wash her legs by rubbing one over another. She pulls, drags and carries things like chair, stool, supermarket basket trolley and big pulley bag. She is getting better at sorting and slotting shapes.

She raises her arm when I ask what's the time. Put up rabbit hair on her hand when we say rabbit, cross her arms with a subtle shake when we say baby, tremble when we say cold. She always sign 3 and 4. So much actions these days!

She knows the hand washing routine - she washes her hands, grabs some soap, takes a tissue to dry her hands and throws it into the bin. She also try to soap herself (hair, arms, tummy and legs) and dry with towel on her own. She helps me to put clothes into the front load washing machine, bring the clothes to the room after I take down it from the poles and also after I folded them. 

Eversince she begins her playgroup, I find that she could sit by herself at the table for a longer time. She loves to pick up a book and read it at the table. She reads her books (especially the animals book) daily and could identifies (by pointing) almost 80% of the animals.

We are 5 months away from Terrible 2 (hopefully a manageable one!) and have already experienced some slight moment when she was upset or fighting to do things her way. She could have learnt them from school or probably it's just natural for all kids. She screams, clenches, pulls her own clothes and bites (some times). We are trying hard to educate her how to control her emotions by setting a good examples, ask her to calm down, talk to her and then divert her attention.

 

Others: We got her new table and chair as well as storage cabinets for her stuffs. The living hall finally looks neater and it also trains Emma to keep her stuffs after play. 

Mummy’s update: It's has been a busy festive month and I am glad that we all still in good shape. I've been spending my free time (aka Emma's sleep time) to do what I enjoy like blogging. I'm also trying hard to cook yummier food for Emma (and us). 

We have been out quite a bit and I didn't get to do much activities with Emma so I'm hoping we could do a little more this month!