Toilet Training

Yesterday, Joash's teacher told me that he said he wanted to poo. And when she brought her to the toilet, he really did it! Great job, Joash!

Call me a lazy mom but I've been very relaxed about toilet training. I'm completely skipping the potty phase and going straight for the toilet seat phase. All I've been doing is simply to tell Joash "Next time tell Mummy when you want to poo poo and Mummy will bring you to the toilet, ok?" whenever I change his soiled diaper. Every time I see him squatting, I'll ask him if he wants to go toilet. But I won't force him if he says 'no'.

There has been numerous times when he told me he wanted to poo but didn't managed to go after sitting on the toilet seat for 5 min. I'll just put his diapers back on when he tells me that he is done and will flush the toilet, even though there isn't anything there.

Although I am disappointed that his first successful poo in the toilet on his own accord is in school, I'm still glad that he is slowly getting it. *all smiles*

What an evening!

I went visiting a friend today so I didn't cook. I was on my way home to keep the pram that Jayna was in so that I could pick Joash up more easily (cos the way to Joash's school is very pram unfriendly) when I realised that our lift was under maintenance. Disappointed, I thought that if I were to go and buy our dinner and pick Joash up first, the lift might have been fixed by then. Thus, I did just that.

Poor Joash, he saw Jayna's milk bottle in the pram and started crying for milk when I met him at the school's doorstep. I promised him his usual enzyme juice when we get home and he calmed down enough to hold my hand as we headed back. When we reached the stairs on the way out of the building, Joash didn't understand why I had to let go of his hand and use both my hands to push the pram up the stairs and he cried again. By then, Jayna also woke up crying because it was very bumpy going up the steps. With two crying children, I reached our lift only to find it still under maintenance!!!

Knowing that this would be a tough one, I went down to Joash's level to explain to him that the lift was spoilt and we had to take a longer and more difficult route to get home and that I needed his cooperation. He seemed to understand and stopped crying. We went to another lift which goes to the 9th floor and walked down the stairs to reach our storey. Joash obeyed me when I told him to wait for me to guide him down the flight of steps (he is still too young to go down a flight of stairs unsupervised safely) till I finished carrying the pram with Jayna and all our barangs+dinner in it to the next stair-landing. I had to repeat this four times before we reached home. I'm so proud of Joash!

When I thought my ordeal was over, the pram tipped backwards due to the weight of the bags and packets of dinner once I let go of its handle at our doorsteps. Down came tumbling all our stuff and the packet of tom yam bee hoon soup I got for Joshua exploded and the soup went splashing onto the pavement together with a few pieces of crabmeat and fishcake. Thank God that Jayna was buckled in and thus escaped unscathed but was nevertheless horribly frightened. Trying not to freak out, I told Joash to take off his own shoes while I settled everything else.

I'm so very proud of Joash! He did take off his own shoes and place them nicely back where they belonged and dutifully went to wash his hands and feet as he was usually taught to do. He climbed onto his toddler chair and waited patiently for me to prepare his enzyme drink and dinner. Poor Jayna! She didn't know what was happening and could only keep crying since I left her at her playpen so that I was free to do everything else. Joash finished up his meal entirely on his own without much mess as I salvaged my husband's dinner, cleaned up the mess outside, brought all our stuff into the house, kept the pram and finally bottle-fed Jayna (poor girl) with my left hand while I ate my dinner with my right hand (I was totally famished by then). Oh, and did I mention that I was just so proud of Joash? *grin*

After all the drama was over with two kids fed and all evidence of the chaos minutes ago disposed of, Joshua came back.

Me: "Did you take the stairs too?"
Joshua: "Nope. The lift was working."
Me: "........" *crows cawing in the background*

Little Punk

Gone for yet another haircut and finally decided to let the hairdresser spray on some complimentary washable color for Joash. He reminds me of those high school delinquents in Jap dramas... LOL

United Square

Last Sat, we went to United Square to meet a another family for lunch. By some strange coincidence, we were all wearing something red or black. We all matched!!!

Don't we look great together? *wink*

Joash had a smashing good time chasing the lights. Take a look at how much fun he had...

Facets of Jayna

Jayna with the Mona Lisa smile

"Laughing" Jayna

Jayna sleeping in the sling

When Jayna wants to sleep, there is no waking her. One of the times when I failed to keep her awake in the day, I decided to play a trick on her...

"Singing" Jayna???

Toddler chair

Recently, Joash has been trying to climb onto his highchair and climb out of it on his own which is a very dangerous thing to do. He has also become very interested in being part of the conversation at meal times and will protest if we don't pay attention to him while we eat.

Thus, we went to IKEA and bought him a toddler chair over the weekend so that he can get into his seat by himself and make it easier for us to include him as we talk at the dining table. He was really happy tonight when we let him sit on the assembled chair. It was chicken feed for him to climb up to and down from his chair and he "spoke" so much during dinner time! (Not that we understood what he said most of the time... heh heh)

Now his highchair is reserved for his sister when she grows old enough to sit up on her own...

Just the right height, don't ya think?


Side view of the chair

Fleshing out

Jayna is growing well! *grin*

She is now able to be awake and alert for 3 hours at a stretch to interact with me and sleep for 4-5 hrs at one go (May the extended sleeping hours happen more often at night than during the day as time goes by...) There have been a few times when she can sleep at bedtime without crying. (Seems like she's getting the idea...) She is drinking a little better and takes a shorter time to finish her milk which comes as a relief for us esp during the night feeds. (Although she still splutters during her feed and needs to be burped at least twice.)

Developmentally, she is better able to follow the animals on the mobile while they move and can stay engaged for a little longer than at first. (10 min now as opposed to the 2 min in the past! Hahaha... Bet you were thinking of a longer duration. :P)

See how she smiles at them?

Also, she is gaining weight, not that we know how heavy she is now since we dun have a digital weighing scale, and filling out her clothes nicely as you can see the difference in the pics below. In fact, she has already outgrown the tightest mittens I bought for her and moving onto the looser ones. She no longer wears the newborn size diapers and has graduated to the 'S' size.

Jayna @ 1 wks old

Jayna @ 7 wks old

I pray for Jayna to sleep through the night soon so that Joshua and I can have uninterrupted sleep once again. :)

Alike meh?

There have been many people who claim that Jayna and Joash look alike but I think that they just can't tell the difference between different babies. Here are the photos of Joash and Jayna at 7 wks old placed side by side. Are they still alike? After all, they each take after a different parent...

Joash (Left) and Jayna (Right)

Race

Is this what they mean by learning how to get a head-start???

Sibling Shots

Jayna: Look at me! Look at me!
Joash: ..... *staring into space*

Jayna: Zzzz.....
Joash: Heh heh...
I wonder what will happen if I take this out?

Jayna: Yay!!! Gor Gor, play with me!

Joash: Pipe down. Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?

Dance and Drums

What a talented boy we have here!

Next up would be trying to video him singing but then...
he has his MOODS...

Joshua and I

Just two photos to remember a long overdue couple time and hard earned break for us.

Treasured stage

I really love the stage Joash is in right now.

He is able to listen to instructions and follow through with them most of the time such as taking off his shoes and putting them back nicely. The way he runs and jumps around is sooooo cute. He is learning a million things now and it's so fun to watch him try his hands at new stuff. He loves to sing and dance and his favorite songs are "Twinkle twinkle little star", "Jesus loves me" and "Happy Birthday". He'll initiate games to play with me and comes over to hug and kiss me on his own. As it is, it warmed my heart this morning to see him clasp his hands together and say 'amen' when we prayed as a family for his sister.

I've been told that this is the best stage when he is able to communicate and is not too assertive yet in insisting his own ways. I dunno much about the notorious 'terrible twos' that many observed but I just wanna treasure every moment I have with him when he is simply so much fun now. Of course he has his cranky moments but they are still manageable. I pray that he'll always be so lovable.

Here's a video of him having fun at IKEA and being his social and active self. :)

Differences

There are just so many differences between Joash and Jayna:

1) He is fair and has light-coloured hair while she is tan and has jet black hair.
2) He look mostly like the father while she looks more like me though they both have Daddy's eyebrows and my single eyelids which make them look similar at first glance.
3) He cries during bath-time but is happy once he's out of the water whereas she enjoys being in the bath but cries afterwards (perhaps she hates being naked and chilled)
4) He guzzles down milk as if he has been starving for days but she takes her royal own sweet time to finish hers.
5) He hardly slept and had very short naps as a newborn while she is sleeps like any regular newborns.
6) He pooped very frequently in the past but she passes motion once daily.
7) He loved being in the pram, falling asleep pretty quickly once he was in it while she merely tolerates being put there and makes her unhappiness known once she has had enough of lying down. (This makes bringing her out esp for marketing very difficult)

Not only are there differences between the children, Joshua and I can really feel our age as compared to two years ago. We are not as able to withstand the lack of sleep as much as before. Joshua has many episodes where he is too tired to know what he is doing (and ends up doing really weird and scary stuff) while I'm so low on energy level that I'm too tired to go out to visit my friends unlike during Joash's era.

My health has never been good since young and after going through two difficult pregnancies and meeting the demands of a homemaker for the past two years, I can feel it in my bones that my body has weakened much and has become easily weary. I sure wonder if we can actually handle any more kids... as much as I would love to...

May the Lord continue to strengthen Joshua and I, restoring our bodies to it's prime state over time. Amen.

Updated family portrait

Happy Family of Four

Sibling love

Promise Breakers

Do you know of a man who seldom keeps his promises? A man who with the "best of intentions" over-promises but under-delivers? A man who does that not only to friends and people at work but to his wife and children? Such a man, if he is a non-Christian, is unsightly and, if a proclaimed believer of God, is detestable in the eyes of God. Such a man defames God's honor for the whole world knows him as an untrustworthy man whose deeds testify against the gospel.

Of course, there are times when it is necessary to have a rain check due to unforeseen circumstances but if such promise breaking becomes a habit and eventually a lifestyle, the man becomes deceitful for he knows he can't keep promises but still makes them anyway.

Proverbs 15:4

"The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit."

And who then, suffers the most when such a man exists? If the wife has God to depend on, she as an adult, will be able to weather through the constant disappointments and learn to trust God instead of her husband. Instead of expecting the husband to rise up as the head of the household, she believes only in God as the only true head since her husband has relinquished that responsibility.

Ephesians 6:4

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

However, not so for the children. They are still learning about the world through their parents and thus, if the father proves to be untrustworthy, they will learn to distrust others and even God Himself. If, for the upteenth time, Daddy says he'll bring him to the zoo, making him look forward to the day with great excitement, but fails to do so only at the last minute due to other commitments such as work, the child will think that other things are more important than him and the disappointments will chip away at his self-confidence and trust in the father over time. It serves as the terrible role model for the child. It would have been better never to have promised in the first place! It is so much more humane for the child to learn that Daddy is expected to be busy at work since he is the breadwinner but will really spend time with him if he ever says so.

Proverbs 13:12

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."

If you, who are reading this, are such a man, I urge you to examine your tongue. Think before you make any promises. It is much better to have said 'no' first and surprise the person with a 'yes' later on than give the person the expectation of that promise fulfilled only to break it at the end. Be the man of your words God wants you to be!

Matthew 5:37
"Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one."

Matthew 21:28-31

“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ ‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did what his father wanted?”