Gege and Jiejie

There are amny kids in the nieghbourhood but they seem to only appear on the weekends. On weekdays they have school and then tuition classes. Otherwise the little land plots are used only on the weekends when the family gather together and the cousins can play.

Being the weekend, kaikai awoke from his nap wanting to look for gege (bigger brother), there are two cousins that live across the street, their porpor (grandmothers) are always passing us fresh vege's and the gong gong (granddad) is farming, kaikai sometimes sits with him near the trail to help sell his vegetables. Gong gong likes asking kaikai about his big belly, they do a belly rub together now and he asks whether kaikai has had his milk.

The two gege's like taking nate to see the bugs they have caught or now its apparently the season for BIG fat worms. Today we found one gege playing with the other kids and invited kaikai to join in. There was a jie jie (big sister) that really took to kaikai and wanted to carry him, instead she helped him peel the green steamed soya beans and made sure he got down the stairs ok.

Their parents and older kids were playing cards and laughing and having a great time, there were remnants of a barbeque and small snacks. One of them gave kaikai a boiled peanut which I let him try, I think he is not allergic to peanuts, no severe reaction immediately nor a few hours later.

Kaikai is really into his tractor tom show and trys to talk like him going, duk duk duk duk duk....

Ike smiles alot now, especially after a good meal or "toot" (as bubby says) or poopoo.

Some point today olivia said HOORAY to kaikai and he looked at her and said, bubby... bubby....

TAS food fair

The American School which is about 10 minutes away from our home had their 24th annual food fair today. They start at 10am and have a carnival like atmosphere.

At 9 am I see Mr. Twinkle Toes (nate) run quickly from the back of the kitchen to the front door, grab his small chair, where he sits to put on his shoes, runs back quickly with it to the back of the house, I suspect to join olivia and wendy at their small breakfast table. I am sitting on the single seat sofa feeding ike. little ike now has eyelashes that poke out of his eyelids, ie getting longer and more hair too. Then mr. twinkle toes zips by again, puts on his new thomas the train sandals and goes around the front to the back area. hmmm?

by the time ike finishes his breakfast it is about 9:20, I go to the back and find nate looking at me saying, bread yummy and wendy and olivia going shhhhhh. They were eating their Qong yubing (onion pancakes, really thin and crispy from the neighbour who makes that for a living and sells it in Tienmu), they admit to feeding him quite a bit, hmmm, dada wasn't so successful at nate's breakfast I see.

9:30 and I say we should try and get ready to go... nate gets his socks and puts on his shoes, I get his snacks and olivia is cleaning up, wendy is preparing ike.... as I get nate into his car seat, I hear this giggles and bug splutter noises.... oh my god screams.... tissue paper flying, more laughter.... ike has pooed on wendy, she catches the stuff without getting the area dirty, olivia is pulling toilet paper out of the toilet holder.

9:45 ike is cleaned up and ready to go... phew.

10:00 we get there, nate tries an ice cream cone by himself (will post picture soon), he will need alot of practise he had a big chocolate beard, ike slept through it all. With all the good malaysian food wendy has been cooking, both the malaysian and singaporean booth was really not that appetising. Bought some NZ cookies which nate had one. Oh and he had two mini sweet potatoes too before the Qong yubing. Where does all this food go?

Before 11, ike is awake and is hungry! wendy and olivia think his poo was bigger than his intake of food! we zip home to feed them and then it was their nap time.

Car Wash and Blankets

I went to the gas station yesterday and nate insisted on going to the car wash. As we approached the car wash, he changed his mind but it was too late... so he said, "scared, mama hold hand" and held my hand throughout the carwash cycle. He says scared too when the DVD reaches a part where two tractors are racing each other. With bugs tho, instead of side stepping them like in the past, he now goes forward to stomp them! Must have learnt that from someone in school.

Nate has this blanket that he likes, it is actually a bed sheet with the elastic around it. Last night he was all tangled in it, so I decided to bring it to the seamstress to remove the elastic band part. At nap time he tried to tuck his feet into the area that the elastic band makes but it was gone! he said, not same, not same.... Speaking of blankets... Ike has outgrown all his swaddling blankets, so i ripped up an old thin bedsheet into four parts and Wendy has sewn up the seams in four different patterns! I think Ike must be 6 kgs by now. He still has dark hair but light skin.

Wendy and Olivia liked the neighbours "chong yu bing" so much that they went over to ask for the recipe... they started a conversation about the weather, the food they have exchanged but when it got to "can you teach us how to make this", apparently the neighbour pretended like she didn't hear that sentence. I guess they are protecting their business as they have a little stall down in Tienmu that does rather well.

Sweeeng and da bian

Every morning when i take nate to school we play at the swing set. he has learnt to balance on the swing for some time now. It must be quite a funny sight as we both pull back the swing, he says "one, two, tweeeeeeeee" or "yi, er, saaaaaan" and then swing forwards and back and forth and back. Some times he continues on, "four, five, six, eight, TEN". Because the swing is quite low nera to the ground, I have to raise my legs, and I like looking at sky (my body is almost straight), he now does that too, tho there is enough room for his legs. We are usually going "wheeeee!! or wheeeeheeeey or woooooo.... recently i realised that other kids are now standing to watch us swing on their way into school... while their parents are grumpily at the gate of the school asking them to hurry on inside. Today I showed him how to jump off when the swing is still moving. He doesn't quite get that yet. Magic he thought?

Today is day three and he finally made a poo. Not constipated but I suspect his intestines wait for a certain mass before producing any output. His new word is "Da bian" (poo poo), the whole way back from school, bla bla bla da bian, kaikai juo da bian, da bian, da bian, da bian. Ike yesterday, while I was burping him made a big sound, unfortunately it was not a burp but from the other end... its velocity power was strong as by the time I passed him to Wendy, the stuff was half way up his back, by the time wendy let him finish it was near his neck!! early bath time for that one!

The last few days I have been retraining Nate's eating habits with bribery (since starvation didn't work), until my new book on children and eating arrives from amazon. At breakfast he gets an evil yellow, orange or pink ball of cereal (I have stars ready for the next meal, maybe I should start a star sticker book?) for each spoon full of cheerios. He hasn't caught on about small spoons = more balls at the end so he takes BIG spoon fulls. Every time he throws cereal on the floor, a ball goes into my mouth (yuck) and he gets one less. If he loses attention span I give him one ball from his collection, he wants the color pink all the time.

The teacher says his eating has improved alot in school. He was doing well by himself then deteriorated to one point, where he sat there with his mouth open like a baby bird. Its bribery for now...

The BIG pee

Nate like going over to the neighbour gege (big brothers) house. Juin Juin is 10 and his cousin is 7, they like collecting fighting beetles and big fat worms, apart from fish and turtles. They also like showing nate their booty and take him on their adventures around their home, which is surrounded by bamboo areas and vegetable patches. On the weekends are when they get to play with nate as other days their schoolwork and tuition classes means they have little time for play.

On Sunday, nate went over to gege's house, he was shown these beetles with big jaws, nate is going through a fear of everything stage and can say the word "scared". At some point he says, pee pee and sow I take him to a tiny drain and he pees with a low arc. Gege seeing this, pulls down his pants and proceeds to make a big stream jet of pee, producing a big puddle and lots of foam. nate seemed very fascinated and now only wants to make big pee puddles and empties much more with less frequencies.

Ike hates the hot weather. He sweats alot and can't sleep well, he needs the aircon and will definitely survive montreal weather. Today after work loren held him till he fell asleep. The other day he had hiccups and I took him for a walk, the breeze and the rustling leaves put him to sleep.

Loren has found us a home in Dainfern, a fenced community with 1,600 homes. Our home plate is number 1811, at least in chinese its a good number meaning sure to prosper everyday. Am checking to see whether it makes sense to buy the house since we will be there for some time. Loren left the pictures of the house in the agents car but described it as about 4,000 sq ft, no funny rooms or carpeting or wierd layouts. I think he said 3 or 4 bedrooms upstairs and one more downstairs. A den area which I will try and turn into the boy's playroom. He has also found a helper who has 2 children aged 6 and 8, who can also stay with us during their school holidays.

The limited reading material that loren brought back is quite interesting, have not found a suzuki music school but otherwise alot of activities. I think I have also found my "print shop". The website of the montesorri school supplier doesn't have table and chairs and I may buy that here. I now have their catalogue.

Today, wendy made soya bean milk, it is very yummy and without preservatives nor sugar. Let's see if nate takes to it tomorrow, he does not seem to like the other drinks that were good for his coughing like red dates and boiled apple.

Nate is making associations that all the lions in different books that he reads are the same type of animal, he puts the pictures next to each other and says "same". He refers to a lion as both a lion and roar.

talking talking talking

Well Nate is talking alot these days. Both in english and in mandarin, this week he started to say "bang mang" and seems to have forgotten "help", he knows both "airplane" and "feiji" but hasn't gotten the hint of magic word. He still does the sign language for please, so actually he is speaking 3 languages? he does niao niao and pee pee.

He thinks "too much" means too little because when he wants more he says "more" and we say "too much". The other day he said to dehdeh, xiexie (thank you) and was surprised that she knew to say "bu keqi" (welcome). He must be able to distinguish who speaks what language. He likes adding "ah" and "ma" to the back of sentences, it makes him feel like he is speaking mandarin and he does a good, "Aiya"

Ike on the other hand is also talking, he talks when awake, when eating and when sleeping. He makes these small noises like mmmm, nnnh, nnng... it is really hard to sleep next to him with the small noises going on then of course he has the big WAAAAHHH.

Today we went to the flea market at TAS (taipei american school). He saw sasha and she grabbed his hand and they walked down the sidewalk hand in hand (where is my camera when I need it?). Sasha's mom said she is quite bossy but she clearly knows what she wants! After they left, kaikai asked for her several times. I think a lurve story is developing there?

The american school has really lovely facilities, even the kindergarden, huge playground, swimming pool, field, activities... lots of developmental material on the wall but too bad there is no chinese classes involved.

Tonight Nate had sushi and that was an easy dinner to do.