Renzo and all his funny patterns

These are all the patterns (I could remember), from our cute little boy before he turns 17 months old on Jan 12, 2011. I am blogging about it because I believe he will laugh out loud one day when he reads this.

Pattern # 1: Ask for FOOD
- He runs to the fridge and says: "open door, open door".
- If we refuse to open the fridge door, he will sit right in front of the fridge and shout: "yakult, yakult".
- Then he pulls his baby chair and says "baby chair, sit down, eat, spoon, fork".
- About one hour later, he plays the same trick and ask for orange, or yogurt.
- He's always eyeing on our neighbour's orange outside their door, ergh, but that's for praying my boy! (the ones on the altar for praying to "ti gong")
Pattern # 2: See car car
- Something he requests everyday, so we have to bring him to the window that has a clear view of the multistory car park.
- Then he starts to name the vehicles he could see one by one: "Car Car", "bicycle", "Van", "Taxi", "Motor cycle", and not forgetting the "dust bin" nearby.
- He also says "train", "bus" when we bring him out, and he could differentiate all these vehicles and pronounce the names pretty clearly. *proud*

Pattern # 3: Jiejie Nice
- When he watches TV or reads magazine, he points at the girls and boys and says "Jiejie, Nice", "Korkor, Nice".
- There's one time he pointed at a baby girl's picture on motherhood magazine and said "Jiejie, Nice", then he kissed that picture and gave me a cheeky smile.
- He calls all actress in the TVB show "宫心计" either "auntie" or "nainai", but whenever he sees 米雪，he calls her "Jiejie".

Pattern # 4: Ayeaye coming
- He knows when he needs our maid and he often goes "Auntie Ayeaye! Auntie Ayeaye!", the pronunciation is extremely clear.
- When Ayeaye told him "coming coming", he will say "Ayeaye coming, Ayeaye coming"

Pattern # 5+6: Q&A + Talking to himself
- I was opening my letters in the envelop and he asked: "What's that?".
- I told him "That's a letter, Renzo".
- He then repeated "letter, letter".
- He walks around the house and goes like "What's that?" "Fan Fan".
- Then he walks to the other side of the room, points at the light and says "What's that?" "Light".

Pattern # 7: Counting
- Renzo counts from ONE to TEN in sequence and he loves to do that almost everyday, sometimes he will randomly add on Fourteen and Eighteen. (Not count to... e.g ...7,8,9,10,18)
- There was once he picked 2 biscuits from his bowl and put on the sofa and said "TWO".

Pattern # 8: Ant
- He points at the ants on the floor and goes "Ant, Ant".
- He points at the mole on my thigh and goes "Ant, Ant".
- He points at the dirt in his bathtub and goes "Ant, Ant", well that's all the dirt washed off from your body lor boy!!

Of course not all of us can see his patterns as most of the time we are at work and he is at home alone with Ayeaye. I am lucky enough to experience all these while I was having my holiday during office shutdown last week. So I had to inform Win immediately after I noticed his new pattern.

No wonder our neighbor auntie once feedback to us that it seems that our boy is scolding our maid (She often heard Renzo calling Ayeaye very loudly, but since she doesn't understand English, she has no clue about their conversation). Well how can a 16 months old boy "scold" a maid?! What I found out after one week is that Renzo knows how to "give instructions" to Ayeaye and get things done his way.

Thanks to all mummy friends

Time flies and our precious boy is 1 year 4 months and 1 week+ old now. He's a big toddler and no longer a baby, although he still has a chubby baby face. ^_^

I looked back at Renzo's growth so far and realized that I have not put in too much efforts to cultivate our boy, well I guess I am just not a mummy who will sacrifice everything including my personal life for my kid. I know a few friends who are like that, including my own twin sister.

But I am grateful that I have a group of wonderful mummy friends that I got to know through internet, I have not met any single one of them in person but they've been giving me loads of support and advice. I think Renzo should be thankful to these aunties one day when he reads this post too!

I talk to this mummy friend often because her boy is as chubby as Renzo and I love to look at his photos as he is simply so adorable. So when I was torn between staying at home to look after Renzo or getting a new job after my retrenchment, she gave me tremendous support and without her advice, probably I will not find such a nice job and start this new chapter of my life.

When I couldn't decide on Renzo's pre-school, another two mummies sent me personal messages on Facebook to give me suggestions on what to look out for. Our kids are born around same time so they understand my concerns and problems the best.

I got to know another mummy, whom I contacted only once via Facebook (yup Facebook again, LOL), because of this video clip she posted online: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=387280521008&comments , For those of you who couldn't view it, it is a clip of her 2 years+ old boy learning phonics, he could blend the alphabets together and make the sound of a word, and even knows the meaning. So I quickly contacted the mummy and asked what kind of enrichment class is his boy attending. Amazingly, it is all through self-teaching and she recommended this set of Leapfrog DVD to me. I have to say this is probably the best gift we ever bought for Renzo so far. He picked up his ALPHABETS from A - F, and some others like M, O, S, Z, etc, NUMBERS from 1 - 10, 14, 18 somehow, MONTHS like August, October, SEASONS like Summer, and DAYS like Tuesday all by himself after he started watching the DVD from about 10 months old till now. And he could even say a few words together to express his needs clearly, such as "go out, take bus", "baby chair, sit down, eat".

Lastly I found this fabulous blog written by Natalie (finally can mention the name of the mummy as I got her permission, kekee), http://preciouscheryl.blogspot.com/2009/11/josiah-montessori-graduation-annual.html , I suggest all parents should spend some time and read through her blog. Her posts were rather short but the content is great, and the pictures and videos she took speak a thousand words. Look at the progress of her precious girl, I am absolutely blown away. And I was so touched that she sent me emails of pages long and shared with me about how she taught her girl and made plans for the benefits of her growth and especially education. I respect her truly for devoting her time to her girl's early education. It is not easy for working parents to set a routine with their kids for crafting / reading / singing / drawing, etc every single night. And I fully agree with her in finding an academic-driven pre-school for Renzo that can build a strong foundation and keep him enthusiastic in learning at the same time. So the rest of his spare time, he could relax and enjoy his childhood, go for enrichment classes such as swimming, art or even golf, to have fun rather than academic stuff like phonics or maths.

I start to believe that ALL mummies are doing their best to provide their children a great future, although there's no guarantee on the result, they will still do it instinctively. And they are always willing to share their insights, as being mummies, they hope for the best for every kids. Kudos to all my mummy friends for a brilliant work done!!

Renzo's Montessori Practical Training

I just spent 2 days and finished reading a pretty interesting book titled "Teaching Montessori in the Home: Pre-School Years: The Pre-School Years" by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. There are a lot of useful information in this book and it has totally changed my perception of "Montessori" method as I always thought it is just about "learning through playing". I was absolutely wrong! It is definitely more complicated than that and indeed I found it a brilliant method of self-teaching our kids.

Most of the training materials could be prepared by ourselves but since they are meant for 2½ years old and above, I decided to start Renzo with some simple puzzles, so we brought back 3 sets of puzzles with knobs on the pieces from Cherry's place, she was pretty good at them when she's young. And when Renzo first started with it last Friday, I couldn't resist the temptation to provide help by telling him:"Come Renzo let mummy show you how to do this!". Then I realized that based on Montessori concept, I should act as an observer who is always there to guide, and keep my boy's enthusiasm alive without interfering with his efforts to teach himself.

So on the following days, I changed my strategy. Basically I just let Renzo continue with whatever he wants to do with his puzzle, including biting and throwing the pieces all over the place. But I give him encouragement immediately when he's able to put the pieces nicely on the wooden board, by clapping with him and telling him that he's done a good job! And 2 day later, this little boy found his way to complete his favorite "transportation vehicle" puzzle, how exactly did he figure that out, I have no idea at all. Look at how excited he was when he completed the puzzle!


Being able to do that at 15 months is not worth showing off, as I think kids with good eye-hand coordination all can do the same, but knowing that he's benefiting from a great learning method is definitely very rewarding!