Pull To Stand

It seems like Jaide is crossing many milestones in quick succession. Now she can even pull to stand! Great job, my little one! Watch the video below to see her in action. *grin*

First Fidgets Experience

Strictly speaking, Jaide has been to Fidgets before when I brought the kids there during a school holiday. But she was just a wee little baby who mostly slept, drank milk and was carried by me. (I remember being able to finish a quarter of a book I brought there to read cos Joash did a fantastic job of keeping Jayna company while at play.)

This time, she is able to roll around, crawl, climb and explore in the baby area. In fact, she's even starting to pull to stand! She was mostly able to play on her own so long as she could see me nearby. Thank God!

Jaide: "One, two... Er, what comes after that?"

Jaide: "Let's see if
I can climb over this..."

The most coincidental thing happened. Jaide found a friend who was born on the same day as her! LOL What are the odds? The other baby girl came into the world earlier by merely 4 hours...

同年同月同日生的姐妹

Pushing the pink 'bolster' back and forth

Jaide is really good with her hands. Both Joash and Jayna were not very interested in the wall mounted manipulatives when they were younger, much less figuring out how to make the knobs move properly. Jaide, however, is a natural at those.

Jaide: "This little piggy
went to the market."

Jaide: "This is the way
we turn the cogs..."

Looking forward to the day when Jaide can independently run wild with the older siblings. With the way things are going, that day may not be too long in coming. Haha...

Jayna is Three!

Isn't she lovely?

My beautiful princess has just turned three! *applause* She has long told me her wish list for her birthday. Despite her trademark fickle-mindedness, she ultimately still reverted back to her original idea after a few changes of mind. She wanted to celebrate her birthday at Fidgets, having three cupcakes instead of a birthday cake (cos she's 3 years old) and eating the cookie with the colorful sprinkles. I bought her a new set of princess accessories and she totally adored them. 

3 candles on 3 cupcakes

Playing happily with her little sister

The long-awaited cookie

Jayna: "This is my house!"

Even though, it is still very tough to be Jayna's main-caregiver, I celebrate the little areas of growth that I see in her. She is now able to play by herself even without Joash's company half the time! Hallelujah! Her willingness to be by herself is not something I'll ever take for granted since it's so difficult for her to reach this stage. 

Her sense of direction is still pretty poor though, getting lost at one point and needing a staff to carry her back to me. (I was watching over Jaide cos Joshua had to do his marking and was not free to help out with the kids.) 

Needless to say, Joash "disappeared" to play with the other kids right from the start and we only saw him when he was hungry/thirsty or needed the toilet as the tap was too high up for him to reach. As for Jaide, I was very happy that she could explore the baby area by herself as long as I was within sight. (More about her in the next post.)

Below is a video of Jayna happily going down the slide with her foil balloon in hand. Not the safest thing to do, but I'd decided not to nag at her on the day of her birthday celebration as long as she didn't hurt herself or other kids. 

Animal Resort

Joash said he wanted to look at chicks but I'm hard pressed to find somewhere in Singapore where he can see those. I even called a chicken farm and asked if we could visit but was rejected as outsiders were not allowed within the compound.

Thus, the next best thing would be to visit the Animal Resort with my CG mate's family instead. No chicks but plenty of other animals.

Waiting to hitch a ride

I'm totally not an animal-nature person. I'm not exactly thrilled with the smells, the heat and the dirt that inadvertently come with going to such places, not to mention being mosquito feed for the entire duration. Argh! *scratch scratch* But my boy loves animals, so what to do? Sigh... The things we do for our children.

Chasing after ducks again...

He was intrigued when he realised that the white parrot could talk. However, every time he approached or spoke to it, the parrot would somewhat clam up. It must have been intimidated by Joash's exuberance. LOL

Joash: "Hello!"

Joash kept asking to feed the rabbits so I ended up buying so many pieces of carrots that I pity the rabbits for having a food overdose. 

Joash: "Why aren't you
eating anymore?"

Wah! So 'enthu' ah...

Geese. They're huge.
(Can you spot a terrapin too?)

Eating from my hand.

Apparently, Joash was not too keen on letting the animals peck at the food in his palms. Too ticklish, perhaps. 

Now, if you're wondering where Jayna was, it means that you do not know her very well. Being such a timid girl, she was absolutely terrified of the animals. Our trip was punctuated with her periodic horror-movie-standard shrieks of fright whenever the animals got too close to her. She was even afraid to feed the cute and tame rabbits which were securely caged up. At the end of the day, she actually said, "Mummy, can we don't come here again?" Sigh... Poor girl. 

It's ironic that Jaide enjoyed the animals more than her older sister, considering the animals were much larger than her! She giggled when the peacock came close to her and was straining around to look and smile at the geese while in the baby carrier. She could almost reach out and touch them! (Not that I'll let her, since she's at the age when she puts her hand in her mouth all the time.)

I sure hope that Joash would be satisfied with this one trip cos I don't think I want to handle Jayna's distress throughout the visit or knowingly traumatize her again. :(

She was happiest here.

School Outing

The above self-taken picture, using the secondary camera on my phone, was the only one I had with Joash since everyone, including me, was too busy looking after the "truckload" of kids for me to ask someone to take a decent one for us.

Yesterday, I joined Joash's K1 class for a school outing around our neighborhood. Since there was no one else to take care of Jaide, she had to tag along with me. I also requested for Jayna, who's in N1, to join us but was declined. Might as well. I had a blast being with my little angel darlings without having to listen to constant whining and deal with incessant fussiness. That said, us parents who came along, all pitched in to help out in guiding the children, it was a physically demanding trip, especially since on top of that, I had to carry Jaide the whole time. 

Joash and his chatty friend

Me and my babe

First stop was NTUC on the way to West Mall. The teachers were introducing to the children what was being sold there. It was quite redundant for Joash as he comes with me on grocery shopping trips all the time and probably knew the place inside out. He mostly looked bored.

After some coaxing,
he finally participated.

Joash: "Daddy likes to eat pineapples!"

After that, they were taught at West Mall what to do if they were to get themselves lost. Again, it was a reiteration of what I already taught my children. Joash totally lost interest at that point.

Next up, they were taken to the post office. Since Joash came with me a couple of times when I needed to send a parcel or post a letter, he was much more interested in the touch screen at the stamp dispenser. 

The climax was watching Ice Age 4 in the cinema while eating popcorn. That was the first time Joash got to enter the movie theatre and he was thrilled. Too bad that, due to some miscommunication regarding the drinks that came with the tickets, we went in late and missed the first 15 min of the movie. 

Joash asked me a lot of questions about it afterwards. One of them was, why the leaves the hamsters wind-glided on were so sharp in front. I took the opportunity to explain a little about aerodynamics, pointing out that birds and airplanes have pointed beak/nose in order to be fly-worthy. After school, I took my kids to the playground to fly paper airplanes so as to drive home the point. 

Jaide, however, was quite terrified of Joash's chatty friend who happened to sit right behind me. This sanguine girl kept wanting to talk to me and play with Jaide during the show. In the end, I was forced to stand up most part of the movie so that Jaide could have some respite from the disturbance. It was such a pity, since Jaide could have slept through the show if she were not woken up by the talking. The show time actually coincided with her morning nap time. As a result, she was overtired from the trip.

The grand finale was lunch at MacDonald's. Joash ate a cheese burger for the first time!

Having Ribena juice first

Here goes nothing...

Mmm... Yummy!

Crawling!!!

She's now crawling! Great job, Jaide! One month slower than Joash but 2 months faster than Jayna who took a long time graduating from butt-shifting.

Lying Down to Sitting up

Before crawling, most babies would have to learn how to sit up from a lying down position first. I'm glad that Jaide has mastered this skill since it means I don't have to help her up every time she finds herself on her back. Phew! She dislikes lying down as she can't see what's going on around her well that way. Haha... The above video commemorates this new milestone reached. 

Next up would be crawling. As it is, she's already inching forward and backward on all fours. However, she seems to be showing signs of doing the butt-shift to get around instead, like her older sister in the past. Or would she crawl at the speed of lightning like Joash? I'm looking forward to knowing soon. *grin*

Found her sitting up when she woke up.
Time to take away the bassinet level!

2 Weeks Later

2 weeks after the first post regarding the first tooth, the other side starting peeking out of the gums. LOL Now there are two! (I was too busy to update the chart earlier. :P)

Night Terror

No, it's not that any of the children have had night terrors. Rather, Jayna has become a night terror to the rest of the family.

As most of our family and friends would know, Jayna has been a difficult child to raise since she was born. Enough said about how much grief she causes during the day, she has always been very disruptive at night if she fails to fall asleep right after being put to bed.

In the past, Joash was able to quietly play by himself till he falls asleep without waking a light-sleeping Jayna as a baby. However, Jayna would refuse to let everyone sleep before she does by asking for the most ridiculous things. And the method of asking? Screaming. She'll scream that she wants to go to the toilet when she doesn't need to. She'll scream about wanting to have medicine applied onto imaginary wounds. She'll scream wanting to sleep with her watch, her toy, her ring, her rubberband, a piece of paper etc. or even something we don't even understand. 

We have tried to meet all her unreasonable requests, patiently explained to her what she's doing to the rest of the family, assured her of our love and the love of God, and when nothing else worked, spanked her for being so inconsiderate to everyone else and outright disobedience. In fact, even Joash tries to help her sleep too by patting her, telling her that Jesus is with her and even keeps her company at her bed on several occasions. It's not that she's not tired enough to sleep because when we finally do spank her, she falls asleep almost immediately after that as it's the only thing the she's afraid of.

Recently, it has become even worse. She'd wait till everyone is sound asleep before she pulls her screaming stunt and rudely waking the other 2 children, both absolutely frightened by the horrible din. Poor baby Jaide would cry for hours before she could go back to sleep. Even Joash got so shocked one of the times that he couldn't stop crying too and behaved as if he just woke up from a night terror. It took both Joshua and I to calm him down. After all the adrenaline rush trying to put everyone back to bed, I would find it hard to get back to sleep myself. Despite being utterly exhausted, I would still be awake in the wee hours of the morning, grieving over my middle daughter's lack of teachability and love for others. Tonight is one of such nights.

I pray that Jayna would one day appreciate the fact that she's still loved by the rest of the family despite the suffering she has put us through. Joash continues to dote on her as the loving brother that he is and Jaide, being such a cheerful baby, bears no grudge against her selfish older sister who often demands so much attention from their mother that her basic needs are sometimes left unmet for a long time.

In the meantime, I need God to daily fill me with new love and new mercies in order to handle the wearing down of my heart, soul and body by my little terror. 

Uniquely Jaide

There are many similarities between Jaide and her older siblings. They all make the same humming sounds while they fall asleep. (I call it the 睡觉歌) They all like to put many fingers into their mouth to self-soothe (though Jaide seems to favor her thumb) and love to sit up in the pram and lean forward to lick/suck/chew at the bar in front. On the MRT train, whenever the stroller is pushed up against the metal grab pole, they will inadvertently strain forward to hold onto it. It did take Jayna a long time to reach this stage though, since she was not content to be in the pram till she was more than a year old.

Perhaps both being girls, Jayna and Jaide are alike in more ways. They both have this thing about sucking in their lips. They have a sweet tooth while Joash has a savory tooth. The two girls also simply love to bounce on their butts when they're happy.

Jaide's 'lipless' smile

Jayna's 'lipless' smile

However, Jaide has a few traits that are uniquely hers. Firstly, she's the only one who enjoys growling, to the utter amusement of her siblings and strangers alike. People simply can't believe that the menacing sounds actually come from such a sweet little thing like her.

You can hear it in the below video:

Next, her tongue is really long and flexible and she often shows it off by sticking out her tongue.

See how long my tongue is!

She also has this really cute habit of pursing her lips repeatedly. Watch the video clip below to see what I mean. *grin*

I wonder if she'll fall asleep while holding her bottle and drinking milk too, just like her brother and sister when they were babies...

Salvation belongs to the Lord!

A4 sized gospel tract
(the smaller booklets
are for them to share to
their friends if they want to)

Joshua and I have never assumed that our children are Christians simply because we raise them to be so. It's a personal decision that they have to make for themselves. Thus, all we'd done was simply to teach them enough about God to allow them to make an informed decision in the future.  During communion time in church, I'd always told them that they were not supposed to partake of the elements because they were not yet Christians and they seemed to have understood my explanation. During our bible studies, I simply taught them about the nature of God and explained what God expects from us, highlighting how we can never live up to it on our own.

Recently, it has become increasingly difficult to draw the line as they started demonstrating a functioning faith in Jesus and sought to obey Him in little ways, e.g. praying for those around them unprompted, proclaiming that they are not afraid because Jesus is with them, thanking God for happy things that happened and asking me to pray for them when they meet difficulties. Once, I asked them if they were Christians, fully expecting them to say that they were not, I was surprised when even Joash seemed unsure. In fact, Jayna protested that she was a Christian because she believed in Jesus. I then knew that it's time for them to know the difference between knowing about God or believing in Jesus and making the intelligent commitment to invite Jesus into their lives as Lord and Savior. 

After seeking the advice of the ladies in our CG during our sisters' night out, I decided to share the gospel in its entirety to Joash and Jayna, and Joshua agreed to do it with me. We printed out the gospel tract for children we found online (Click HERE for the site) and got nice cards for them to write down their commitment as a beautiful reminder of the day they accepted Christ. We asked my mum-in-law to take care of Jaide while we went to Vivocity to find a quiet place for the session.

At the Pacific Coffee Company, Joshua shared to Joash while I spoke to Jayna. What was presented was not new to them and thus it didn't take lengthy explanations to help them understand the concepts. When it came to the decision part, Joash was rather shy about it (as mentioned by Joshua) while Jayna was so eager to pray the prayer because she didn't want Jesus to be outside of her life anymore. I tried to highlight the enormity of the decision she was making but she seemed to be annoyed that I kept ascertaining her understanding of the commitment. 

After they prayed to receive Jesus, we let them write down a message to Jesus. Joash could write it by himself but Jayna needed me to help guide her hand. We ended the session with a ice chocolate drink for both of them to celebrate.

During bedtime prayer tonight, the children were very happy and excited when I told them that Jesus is now not just with them but is also in their hearts and He'll never leave them or forsake them. In fact, Jayna remembered the commitment card very clearly. 

I am thankful for this day when we can celebrate their salvation, granted that there is a possibility for them to backslide when they are older. However, salvation belongs to the Lord and I'm sure God honors the child-like faith that they've demonstrated today. We will continue to disciple them and encourage them in their walk with God and renew their commitment every 7th of July, their spiritual birthday. By the time they are teens, we hope that they would then make the public confession of their faith through baptism. Do pray together with us for that day to come. *grin*

The covers of their commitment cards

On the inside

Milestones List

Just thought to make one so that I won't forget at what age the kids reach their milestones. My memory gets really fuzzy after a while and I would like be able to answer the children if they ask about it when they are older. 

As it is, there are some milestones such as "First Laugh" and "First Word" which I wish I can remember... Those were not recorded down anywhere on my blog or in my photo albums. At least, as I recall, the girls called Papa first while Joash said Mama first. And of course, our dear Jayna who refused all solids till 9 months old! 

There will definitely be more to come when Jaide reaches the rest of the baby milestones. Looking forward to them.

It Sprouted!

Because Jayna's teeth grew out unevenly (In fact, one of her incisors merged with a cuspid!) and her molars came out super late, I did not manage to complete her tooth chart as accurately as I did with Joash's. I sure hope that I can finish up Jaide's chart properly.

I can't believe that I'm still excited about my child's first tooth despite her being the third kid! 

Funny Story:

I think I know where that small little cut on Jaide's thumb came from. (The one that caused Jayna to cry in empathy) Today, I saw her sucking on her thumb and then cried out all of a sudden. She must have chewed too hard and her emerging tooth hurt her thumb! O_o

Fashionista

Both Joash and Jayna had their own fashion show videos. (To view them, click HERE) How can Jaide miss out on that? So here it is: