My little baby is 8 months old. How is it that times just flies? He's not quite a little baby anymore!

The past week has been a week of change. All of a sudden, he's my lil koala, clinging to me all the time! Not that I mind because he's so cuddly but it's just hard when we've got so much to do. He used to just fall asleep on his own when I put him down but suddenly, when I turn off the lights, he instinctively knows that it's bedtime and starts crying! Aiyo, he'll complain but eventually still falls asleep. All kids are like that, at different points of their lives, they'll try to see if they can push the boundaries and if we as the parents keep to it, they'll fall back to the routine. I think he's also starting to have separation anxiety. He's looking out for familiar people.

He's sprouting two more teeth. He's also starting to crawl somewhat and trying to pull himself up the table. He's somehow able to pick up all the dirt from the carpet and he's always got stray hairs, bits of paper, tissues and stickers in his mouth. He is starting to say "mummmmm mummmm", ''mmmma mmmaaa", "da da da" and "che che che" indiscriminately.

A couple of weeks back, we got Pastor Chung to dedicate Levi to the Lord and he prayed for Levi. I believe he's gonna be a steady man of faith.

This is Levi and his friend, Jamie on the base. They are only a week apart and have practically grown up together on the base the past few months. They say Jamie is the smiley one and Levi is the serious one and his smiles are like gold and got daily quota one. Friends on the base are always trying their best to get Levi to smile. It's super funny to see what adults would do to get babies to smile or laugh.

But the nice thing is that he smiles for us and Sophie can make him laugh like nobody can. That's all that matters.

Happy 8 months old little precious!

Isn't he just the cutest?

This little one LOVES his food. As soon as he sees someone eating,
which happens through the day in our household, you'll hear him LOUD
and CLEAR. So we've been sharing with him everything we've been eating
- bread, rice, fruits, etc. He's been eating food that we wouldn't
have dreamt of giving to Sophie at the same age! Yep second kid
syndrome. But it actually works out pretty good coz Sophie and Levi
can share food. Sometimes he eats more than her!

This little one LOVES paper. He loves the printed word. Somehow he's
not into his brightly coloured toys made of cloth or plastic. He likes
books, paper, esp magazines pages that are brightly coloured. He's
always eyeing my magazines. Hmmmm....

This little one has just started babbling. I wonder if he will speak
as soon as Sophie. It does seem like he will coz he's got really clear
syllabus! He's going "pa pa pa pa" already. Very very cute!

Love him to bits!

Sophie turns 4 and a half this week. I've been a mother for 4 and a
half years! Both of us have grown so much.

She's super cute. She's very observant, quirky, creative, imaginative,
smart, talkative, sensitive, helpful, full of drama, full of life,
strong willed, friendly yet shy at times, passionate... etc etc...
She's so smart and she's got so much energy that sometimes we feel
like we can't catch up with her. She's definitely not boring. :)

Sometimes she's so full on that our tendency is to clam her down - do
this, don't do that, do that, don't do this etc etc... coz the easy
way of parenting is control but we have learnt to slow down and get to
know her. It's not easy but with God's grace and help, I believe it'll
help her to fully be all that God wants her to be.

I still can't believe that she's reading fluently at 4 and she can
read almost anything she picks up. She reads as well as a 10 year old
girl on the base! I didn't even get pass Lesson 20 on Reading Made
Easy.

We did focus more on reading than Math but since she's right on track
for reading, I've switched focus to Math. With the help of some
manipulatives (we use vintage buttons - that's all I have and I love
looking at them, so does she. I got them at a flea market for next to
nothing), she's picked up her additions pretty quickly! She's not into
boring so it keeps me on my toes to think of interesting ways to teach
her.

She still struggles with writing so we're working on that slowly.
Recently, I created a "card making" station for her. It's equipped
with stamps, stamp pads, cards, envelopes, colour pencils and a piece
of paper with words like "I Love You!, Hello!, How are you?, I miss
you" and she can copy them and write cards to her friends. And she's
really taken to it, she wrote a birthday card to her friend on her
own. Super cute!

We've been working on her chores and manners recently. Her current
family chore is arranging the shoes. This is ironic because it's one
chore that my mother never successfully got me to do! I can still hear
my mum's voice - "Put your shoes properly!" (right mum? :)) When she
comes home from dinner, she needs to arrange all our footwear neatly.

She's got her other chores too like making her bed, drawing the
curtains, taking the dishes to the sink, putting her laundry into the
basket, tissues into the dustbin, putting the toothbrush and
toothpaste back into the cup etc etc.... little things like that that
are so tempting to just pick up after her if she doesn't do it. But
the training though repetitive WILL in the long run become second
nature. I'm trying to stick to the point that I shouldn't have to do
for her what she can already do herself but oh........ sometimes it's
so hard coz it's just so much faster if I do it! But one thing I've
learnt here is not to "rescue" but to just let her do it. And also
instead of nagging, we've got a chore chart that she ticks off when
she's done it and she loves ticking hahaha... so it works. Right now
we've got no reward for that coz she seems just happy ticking but we
may work into it a reward system. One book that I really recommend for
this is Raising Great Kids by Dr Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

In our parenting class, we learn about 4 different personalities of
children - Captain, Teddy Bear, Busy Bee and Clown and how to parent
them according to their personalities (if anyone is keen, I can write
more about this). Very helpful and interesting insight. According to
the description, Sophie is a Captain Clown and her tendency is to rule
the house and she loves being the centre of attention. Can be pretty
demanding most times and it's been such a challenge to teach her to
ask nicely, say her "May I?"s, "Please"s and "Thank You"s. She goes
into auto pilot mode and demands for things. But she's learning and
improving. It's so cute to watch her waiting for adults to finish
their conversations and with her little voice saying "Excuse me,
Auntie Andrea.... excuse me, Auntie Andrea...." and finally I have to
help her get their attention coz she's just so soft. She likes to talk
to some adults and is sometimes quite kapoh (inquisitive) so she wants
to butt into their conversations. Have to teach her to say excuse me.
Super cute. Oh btw, she calls the adults by their first names because
that's how it is here. She goes to the Base Director and calls him,
Ross! Ross!. Yeeks! I'm slowly trying to change that before we return
to Singapore. Can't imagine her calling Kelvin (my bro) by his first
name! Or Pastor Rennis, Yo Rennis! Faint.....

I really love having Sophie. She's a very precious gift and just so
delicate in many ways. Pls pray for us that the Lord will grant us
wisdom to carefully train and love this little one.

Picture of James with Levi and our speaker on Parenting, Ian Hooker, with Jamie, our friend's son, also six months old.

My baby is six months old! He's got two bottom teeth, sitting up quite
steadily on his own, happily flipping front to back and back to front,
able to launch out of his bumbo seat (wasn't quite expecting that one
so soon!), flips fast enough to fall off our bed if we fall asleep and
are not watching, and he's happily eating his solids 2 meals a day.

Wow, that's a great deal for a six month old! Way to go lil Didi, we
love you so much!

Side note (this is for me when I've totally forgotten the difficult
parts when he's grown up): Breastfeeding has been a great challenge
with Levi. I've had mastitis twice in the past six months and
constantly battling with blocked ducts. I think it's the way he feeds.
I'm almost at the verge of completely weaning him. Got a tin of
formula on standby. I've been thru 3 rounds of antibiotics - twice for
mastitis and once for toothache and he's been through 1 round of
antibiotics himself when he had the skin infection. I feel really bad
that he has had to suffer the consequences of that e.g. runny poo.
We'll see how that goes.

Levi is still waking in the night, at least once. The past week, he's
been up twice a night - once at 2ish and then 4/5ish. We've eliminated
one feed and I'm only feeding him once at 4/5ish, James gets up to put
him back to bed when he wakes up at 2ish. Oooo so tiring. Sigh but
when the morning comes and I see how cute he is, I forget how tired I
am. :)

The little one has been really cute. So glad that we decided to have No. 2.

Since school has started, we've been super busy. Levi comes with us to
class. We do not have enough creche staff to look after both Jamie
(our friend's 5 month old baby) and Levi so both Emily and I have to
juggle being full time mummy and full time classroom staff. Woah! It's
been a challenge. Especially since both the babies are finding their
voices! Sometimes their voices are louder than the speaker's! Oops.

For naps Levi has been sleeping in his pram. That was part of the plan
when we bought the Mountain Buggy. It's so big that even Sophie can
sleep in it. Ha! We kinda knew that we would have to look after Levi
while being in class. If he goes into the pram in time, he sleeps
pretty easily and can sleep up to 2 hrs. Mostly just 1 hr.

Sometimes we're so busy through the day that I forget if he's had a
nap or whether he's had a feed! Ha! Ok not so funny but it's been
pretty crazy trying to juggle it all but thank God it's starting to
fall in place and we're getting more used to it. He's very easily
distracted when feeding so instead of feeding him in the classroom, I
now go into a side room to do that. That has been really good because
it's also our one-on-one time whereas previously I was just putting
him to sleep and feeding him without paying much attention to him.

His daytime sleeps are pretty regular but his nighttime sleeps have
been horrendous! He did like 2 days of 7pm-7am and that was it! Most
days he's still waking up 1-3 times in the night! Eeeks! I can hardly
wake up in the morning and we have meetings at 8am. I can't figure why
he still keeps waking in the night. We have attributed it to a few
reasons and are in the process of figuring it out.

He has started eating solid food! We decided to start him because he
was still crying even after being breastfed. This lil big boy wants
more! The first two days everything that we put into his mouth kept
coming back out again but by the 3rd day, he got it and is now really
enjoying his food. In fact he complains when the food's all gone!
Looks like we've got another eater in our hands. :) Sophie ate really
well as a baby too.

His fav thing to do is to pull my hair. He's got a really strong grip
and loves to hang onto me for dear life.

He's also sprouted two lower teeth. That might be one of the reason
why he keeps waking up.

It's been really precious to see Sophie and Levi playing together. His
face lights up when she comes into the room. And she's always making
him laugh. Very very adorable to watch.

Love this lil one to bits, feel like he's growing up a little too fast!

The two faces of our little one.. actually the one on the right would have made a great passport pic!

Our baby boy is 3 months old!

I'm not sure how heavy he is now (he was 6.5kg before we left for V2) but he's definitely big! Everywhere we went in Vanuatu, they went "fat fat, fat fat". They didn't mean it in a mean way but it's their way of saying teasing a big cute baby in their culture. Even in NZ, the people say he's big so I guess even compared to a kiwi baby, he's big! One thing for sure, there's no hiding him discreetly when I'm breastfeeding him or carrying him in a sling (which we don't use anymore coz he's just too heavy).

He's a talker. Seriously. If you think Sophie can talk at 4 yrs old, you shd see Levi at 3 months! He'll keep talking non-stop if you keep talking to him. Super cute! He makes all these sounds that makes me go "awwww....". If he's crying, we just have to engage his eye contact and try to talk to him, he'll eventually stop! It's like he just needs to be listened to. He's usually quite easy to be calmed down, unless he's way past his bedtime. Ok I will never understand how 2 parents who don't talk a lot ended up with 2 children that are so talkative!

He's sleeping a bit better in the night now but it varies from night to night. Once in V2, he did a 7 hr sleep stretch... but only once. Most nights he still wakes every 3-4 hrs to feed. I'm hoping he'll do a 5 hr stretch soon coz it's really testing my ability to keep sane during the day with a super inquisitive and active 4 yr old and 3 month old that needs to be patted to sleep.

I still can't believe 3 months have just flown by. It's really such a blessing to have Levi. Having a boy is such a different experience. Very cool. I'm really thankful.

Levi is exactly a month old today.

He's doing really well. He's now 4.7 kg, a whooping 10 lbs! He's outgrown his New Born (NB) sized onesies and is almost bursting out of the Huggies NB sized diapers! I went to buy Infant sized diapers yesterday and by instinct got a pink pack instead of blue. I didn't even realise it until I came home. Even the midwife here commented that he was big. I guess he's big even for babies here.

Some days he's still feeding every 2 - 2 1/2 hours but mostly he's doing 3 hrly feeds. He's sleeping better in the nights but also still waking every 3 hours on good nights to feed.

He's much more alert now and is constantly looking to engage eye contact. I think he likes communicating as much as Sophie.

We're still trying to get used to eating at the dinner hall. If he's sleeping, he tends to cry and wake because of the noise level. But good thing is that everyone is more than happy to take over and carry him. :)

Here's what I can do at 4:

1. I can read!

Mummy's comments: YES! After teaching her phonics for the past few months, she's beginning to read. We use Reading Made Easy and Explode the Code and of course, lotsa lotsa reading everyday. She can read simple words and know most of the sight words. Mostly she reads by context and part memorization but sometimes she surprises us by reading signs that she'd never seen before. We've got a couple of Strawberry Shortcake readers and she loves to read to Levi (ok that's my trick of getting her to read aloud coz she still prefers us to read to her. If I say to read to Levi, sometimes she'll oblige.)

2. I can write!

Mummy's comments: We're still working on this. When we first started homeschooling this term, she wasn't keen on writing and it was too stressful to get her writing consistently and properly so I gave it a rest. But recently she's starting to want to write again so we've picked it up again and she's doing well!

3. I can talk to anyone about anything. Ok, anyone who would listen.

Mummy's comments: Sophie can REALLY talk. And talk. And talk! One of the best thing about being here is that everyone listens to a kid! Kids are not ignored, told off or brushed off when they speak. Or the worst, patronised. I love the way adults communicate with children here. They really listen to what Sophie have to say and she has lots to say. This has really helped Sophie to develop and form her identity. She is very confident amongst adults and older children and has no problem holding her own ground. Now I just need to teach her not to butt into people's conversations. :)

4. I can carry my didi!

Mummy's comments: She's doing really well as an older sister. I think it's been great to have a 4 yr gap between the two kids. Sophie has been rather patient during the times I need to look after Levi. She'll play or read in her room and wait for me. Sometimes I will just read to her while I'm feeding Levi. In the beginning it was a bit harder but 4 wks in, she's doing very well. She's been having a cough and cold this week and she's been very considerate not to go kiss Levi and remembering to close her mouth when she sneezes or coughs. But James has been really good and been very deliberate in spending more time with her and I think that really helped in the transition. I just wished I have more time to spend with her.

Things I like
1. Anything pink and sparkly
2. Princessy things, dolls, Strawberry Shortcake, ballerinas
3. Bling blings - rings, bracelets, etc
4. Cheese - I share Mummy's love for soft cheeses too!
5. Green leafy veggies and fruits
6. Fairy Tales - I still like reading a lot

Things I dislike
1. Main meals - Mum says it's SO hard to get me to eat!
2. Villains - I hate bad people or characters in movies.
3. Putting on too many layers. I don't feel cold! I'm really a summer kinda girl, give me a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops, I'm happy.

My in laws left on Sunday and I've been so busy the past week trying to catch up and to get a hang on being on our own. Finally I have some time to blog. So much have happened since!

First of all, Sophie turned 4 last Saturday. We had a huge celebration party for her on Friday afternoon. My in laws have been planning this for her even before they arrived. They brought all the party decorations, invites and goody bag things from Singapore! On the day itself, they cooked fried noodles, chicken wings and sausages.

The kids had a blast with all the goodies! We played pass the parcel, Sophie's special request. Even the adults broke fast to enjoy the food (check out the food spread in the photo above) and played with the toy cars in the goody bag. :) Sophie had lotsa fun hanging out with her friends and just enjoying the attention.

The Birthday Cake
Last year I made a jelly cake for Sophie - a no-bake idiot proof thing to do.

This year, I attempted to bake a cake coz I didn't even know how to go about ordering a cake here! No one really order birthday cakes around here. I guess I could have bought one at the supermarket but it was just strange to do that. Everyone makes their own so I attempted to do so. What a disaster! It took me three attempts before I got it close to a birthday cake taste and feel! Anyways here's how it turned out. I ran out of time to do the icing coz Levi had to feed so James took over and I'm glad he did coz he's the artistic one. It turned out beautiful in a homemade kinda way. :)

One guy had three pieces of it so I guess it must have tasted alright. But the funny thing was that he told my mother in law that the bread tasted really nice. Erm... he was referring to the cake but maybe he's danish so his englands not vely goods. Anyway, I discovered the hard way that baking is NOT one of my giftings. Ha! But I had fun trying tho.

It's our princess' birthday tomorrow! She turns four.

She's going to have a Princess Party with motorcars and motorbikes as door gifts later today. :) It's kinda a mish mash party theme with lotsa lotsa pink! Photos to come later. Pray for good weather!