Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

As our family is quite into photography, our kids kind of naturally grow up seeing cameras pointing towards their faces pretty often.

I take photos nearly everyday. It’s more like a hobby to me. And on top of that, I just want to preserve as much growing-up moments with and of the kids as possible. And with that same Canon Ixus, I take video clips of the kids too, though not as much.

The thing is, despite the facts above, we don’t have that many family photos. And I mean, nice family photos. Photos that are not taken with one of our arms stretched out (read: self-taken).

And, although Wilson – in running our business – deals with video cameras too, we don’t have any nice videos of our little family too so far.

Until today.

Late afternoon today, we took some clips of the kids. And even of the four of us! (Wilson had to leave the camera on the ground, press the recording button, run towards us and sit together with us while we all look at the camera!)

I’m so happy we finally had done it.

Honestly though, I’m not too sure if we ever get to edit the clips and produce a nice video out of it.

Anyway, if we somehow manage to, I’ll sure share it with you all *smile*

PS: Since I sometimes do get asked about the kind of business that we run, I guess I’ll explain it briefly here:

we’re in the creative industry, producing works for advertising, film and television – online as well as print. We do creative concepts, graphic designs, visual effects works, 3D as well as animations.

If you feel you want to know more, just drop me an email yeah *smile*

With Vai, mealtimes are hardly ever plain nor straight forward. Since the very first day we introduced solids to him at 5.5 months old.

And now, though he can pretty much feed himself with a big spoon and all, it’s still up to his mood – whether he’ll gobble his meal well (self-feed or spoonfed), eat three to four spoonfuls and reject the rest (even if spoonfed), or pick and slowly drop his food down to the floor!

[This is despite our continual effort in teaching him a ‘better’ eating manner]

And, of course, there are days too where he simply does BOTH.

Like today.

Other than using the spoon, he ‘hand-picked’ his rice, put some into his mouth, dropped some on the table and down to the floor.

And after some five minutes or so, he’d want to get down from the chair, but after some (apparently successful) distractions, he managed to finish up most of his meal by himself.

Oh well, AT LEAST he ate his food, I told myself *rolls eyes*

Anyway, click here to see Vai and his messy (yet relatively ‘successful’) mealtime today.

PS: Sitting and eating by the roadside – with things readily seen by the kid – does help in keeping Vai and Anya somewhat ‘entertained’ (even if the ‘entertaining impact’ lasts for a short while, to me it’s still better than nothing)

One interesting thing about being a fulltime mom is that you get to see a lot of (all, if they haven’t started school) their day-to-day ups and downs. Their sweet and not-so-sweet daily episodes.

And as for my case, the kids somehow have been giving me quite a few difficult moments lately.

Objects being thrown around. Spilled water (coming from the mouth!) on the floor and even on the bed. Whining and nagging. Toys being the tug-of-war objects between the two. Super slow milk drinking. Refusal to share, which often ends up with a bit of screaming and crying. Acting as if their hearing abilities are turned off. Flicking of vegetables and rice from the high chair to the dining floor. Sprinkling of baby powders on table tops and floors.

The list can go on and on. And it does get pretty interesting.

While such ‘episodes’ don’t happen throughout the day (thank goodness!), when they do, and when they’re coupled with the internet being down and stuff, they can drive me up the wall.

Okay I didn’t reach my boiling point – like I did some 3 weeks ago – but such episodes do turn my mind pretty numb at times.

From raising my voice, giving them super stern look and talk, yelling, giving a quick slap on the palm, to simply looking at the mess and behaviours, giving the kids my tired, super displeased and ‘you-should-know-this-is-wrong’ look and leaving the site only to return a few minutes later.

And when I just feel too verbally and mentally tired to explain and reason with the older one, I’d let her be by herself. In the bedroom. Where there’s zero audience to her unreasonable cries and whines (the ‘break’ gives me some time to cool my mind off too).

And after a minute or so (depending on the scale of the drama), I’d then go in and speak to her, hoping to bring the chapter to a close. If my request (for her to end her tantrums) falls on deaf ears, then I’d repeat the whole process again (leave her, and come back a few minutes later).

I’ve got to say though, God is good. When you’re just tired from handling a string of draining incidents, the kids can be really sweet, so sweet that they manage to put a little smile on a tired mom’s face.

So. There you go.

A little insight into a fulltime mommy’s day.

A quick activity the kids did together earlier today.

You’d only need :

– a few pages of some old newspaper (choose ones with ‘colours’ on them)
– scissors and glue
– extra stickers and crayons for the little one

Basically, Anya made ‘newspaper people’ today, from newspaper cut-outs.

I asked her for the colours (ie. colours of the person’s dress, hair, shoes, etc), and I cut it out for her. She got to choose the ‘dress pattern’ from the newspaper’s ‘fashion spread’. After they’re all cut out, she stuck them on a piece of white paper.

As for Vai, I cut out different shapes for him (and went through the different shape names so he could learn these too), put on some glue on the back, and let him stick them on his paper.

In the end, he stuck on some stickers and scribbled away.

Anya sure was pleased with her ‘newspaper girl’ *smile*

We’ve been wanting to get the kids to move into their own room, but finding the ‘right time’ to do it proves to be a little bit more difficult than we’ve first expected.

Until last Saturday, anyway.

The aircon men came and did some 8-hours worth of fixing and drilling. We moved quite a lot of our things around the place, and our home ended up really messy and dusty.

Now. When we re-arranged everything and cleaned up our home, we went ahead and arranged THEIR room and moved some of their things into it, like their drawer full of storybooks and toy boxes.

Being the bigger sister who can already understand certain things, we told her about our plan and she’s very happy about the move!

[We completely had NO idea how Vai would ‘react’ to the change though]

Apparently, everything went pretty well. Much to our relief.

The kids jumped on their ‘new’ beds, played and read books together. It was as if they’ve been sleeping in that room for some time already.

Oh btw, we had both our bedroom doors open as Vai is yet to master the art of ‘turning the door knob open’. He came to our room at 6.30am, climbed up to my bed and with eyes 90% still closed he asked to be nursed.

Afterwards, he came down from my bed, and I held his hand as he walked – still very much sleepy – towards his bedroom. I stopped at his bedroom door and asked him to go back to sleep. He then wobbled and walked towards his bed and plonked his sleepy head on the mattress.

He came back to our bedroom twice after that, and I did the same thing. Held his hand and took him back to his room (just right up to the door).

And it was good afterwards. They both slept well throughout the night.

We’re so happy.

PS: We plan to get Vai his own room when he’s around three years old.

That was how Anya looked like when she’s 20 months old.

And looking back at how she was at that age, and how Vai is right now, I can list down more of their differences than their similarities.

Like for example,

When faced with obstacles (eg. pushing a rather heavy door open):

Anya tends to call for help and needs our encouragements before she gathers enough courage and strength to give it a go herself

Vai will most likely just go for it

A talker or a walker:

Anya: a talker (who tends to remember little details well too)

Vai : a walker (who likes to sit down with crayons and paper too)

When told not to do something after an incident (eg. not to draw on the floor again):

Anya will most likely not do it again
(but then again, it really does depend on ‘what’ it is that we’re asking her not to repeat, because for the past few months, I’ve been repeating myself too much, reminding her to not drink her milk super slowly)

Vai tends to forget what we’ve been telling him again and again (!)

When they misbehave and we tell them off:

Anya – upon hearing our displeased verbal tone of voice – can break down and cry, feeling sorry for what she’s done
(again, this doesn’t quite apply to all circumstances, of course)

Vai hardly cries or shows any ‘remorse’ on his face
(But he can sometimes say ‘sorry’ and give me a pat on my arm or shoulder)

…

If you ask me, I think when we have more than one kid in the family, it’s nearly impossible for us not to compare them with one another.

We see how they develop differently, how they have similar or different characters and traits, how one starts crawling or talking at a younger age, etc.

To me, what’s more important is ‘what do we do’ AFTER we run a mental comparison of our kids in our head.

Do we talk about the kids’ weaknesses and differences negatively in front of our little ones themselves (and our friends?), degrading one and praising the other (even in a joking manner).

Or do we complain about one kid in front of the other, emphasising the strengths of one and expecting the other to perform ‘just like your sibling’

Thing is, we may have done it unconsciously before.

My hubby once reminded me to be careful with the way I talk about the kids when sharing about them with my friends, because usually kids do listen up quietly to our conversations.

Let’s be more mindful with our words when it comes to talking about (and in front of) our little ones.

Because the last thing we want to create within our family is an unhealthy competition and bitterness amongst siblings who’re supposed to be loving towards each other in the first place.

Babies and little children are like angels ‘without wings’. They seem so innocent, so sweet, so adorable.

Parents however shouldn’t only focus on the cute side of these little ones and forget about disciplining, training and teaching them the right way.

When a little child’s potential is continually developed, he may one day become a world leader, a musician, a scientist or an artist. Someone who gives positive impacts to the world.

But let us not forget that ‘bad’ husbands and wives, power-hungry bosses and thieves were once cute babies and children too.

While there are factors that are beyond our control when it comes to raising our children (especially when they’ve reached their teenage years), one major factor that sure helps in shaping their characters is our strong and positive influence in their first years.

To carefully watch over and teach our children is our task and responsibility as parents.

Let’s do more than just ‘be there’ for our little ones.

Let’s make a positive impact in their lives that will (hopefully) last a life time.