Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

Meals

Vai now can help himself with food like corn cobs and peeled apples. I guess now that he has fourteen teeth altogether helps quite a bit.

Usually at dinnertime, I’d give him a little bit of his food on a plastic bowl. I’d then place his fork or spoon on his baby chair’s table, depending on the food he’s having (he now uses his fork quite well, and is still learning how to use the spoon).

After saying grace together, he’d then start self-feeding himself (and at times, he ends up using his hands anyway!). When he’s about 80% done with his food (which by then usually is quite ‘everywhere’!), I’d then sit next to him to spoonfeed him the rest of his meals from my bowl.

When he’s engaged in self-feeding (or using a spoon to stir his bowl, etc), spoonfeeding him does get a little less challenging.

Milk

He’s still breastfed. As for his formula milk, it’s either spoonfed or mixed with his rice cereals, oatmeal, steamed eggs, etc.

Just before bedtime, bottlefeeding him is slightly better these past few days.

He’d really struggle, scream and complain at first, but in the end he’s willing to drink 125ml of formula while laying down on my lap (I need to continually sing and make silly faces though, otherwise he’d want to get up and go!)

I hope to slowly increase the amount. Not too sure if he’s okay with it.

Tooth-brushing

He’s now okay with brushing his teeth (he used to close his mouth real tight!). After his shower, I’d carry him and using my other hand, I’d brush his teeth with a kiddy toothbrush (no toothpaste yet).

He opens his mouth and lets me brush his teeth, and sticks out his tongue when I ask him too. It’s great!

Language

By now, some of the words he likes to say are: ‘Go’, ‘Ta’ (for ‘stop’), ‘Ja…to’ (Indo for ‘fall down’), ‘uh-oh’, ‘Tee’ (for ‘tree’), ‘Daaa’ (for ‘dog’), as well as ‘Mommy’ and ‘Daaa-ddy’.

He understands our instructions or requests quite well.

If he holds a piece of paper and we ask him to throw it into the bin, he’d go to the kitchen, step on the pedal bin and throw it away. If we say, “Come, it’s mealtime, please sit on your chair’, he’d then go towards his baby chair and gesture to me that he’d like to sit on it.

Emotional

At times he can get very clingy. He’d be in a room full of people and he’d be okay IF he knows we are also somewhere inside the same room. If he can’t spot us, he’d start going around, looking for us with a worried look in his eyes. If he still can’t spot us, his lips will look like an upside-down ‘U’. AND within a few seconds, he’d start crying real loud.

If he’s made a mistake and I firmly tell him how he shouldn’t do it again, he can at times avoid making eye-contact with me (I can tell from his eyes though that he knows what he’s done wrong and is being told about it)

When Anya cries, he sometimes approaches her and gives her hair a gentle stroke.

Weight

He’s now 12.4kg