24 Months

Abby turned 24 months (two years old!) last week.

Weight

11.1kg.

Height/Length

Not measured.

Teeth

Still 16 pearly whites.

Motor Skills

• Recognises the diapers she has been wearing in the supermarket. She pointed to the exact brand/packaging and pointing to the diaper she is wearing that time.
• She insisted to brush her own teeth and requested for ‘eh-paste’ (toothpaste) each time. Sometimes mistaken oitment that comes in a tube as toothpaste.
• Current favourite song – Give me oil in my lamp with actions.
• Understands the value of money. Thanks to MIL who loves to ask for her ‘help’ in the shop and AIL who loves to involve her with marketing almost every morning. She chanced upon a gold medal and mistaken them as ‘chin chin’ (money in Cantonese). LOL On another note, she saw a RM10 note in my handphone cover. She has been telling me to “open” and “buy mom-mom”. Tsk tsk (290716).
• Has finally mustered the courage and shown liking towards the horse spring bouncer in the playground. Ever since then, she has been calling horse ‘eh-dock’ instead of ‘neigh-neigh’ (300716).
• When she saw me trimming my nails one day, she doesn't want to miss out a fair share. She has been requesting me to “cut” her “leg”(i.e toe nails) by bringing my hand with nail clipper near to her toes (030816).
• Monkey see monkey do. This little vain pot loves to rummage into my custom jewelry box and sometimes into my brooches collection. She would pick one to her liking and put it near to her earlobe, pretending as if putting onto earrings.
• Loves baby songs series, where she can prance and dance along.
• She has been Ah Tai's Florence Nightingale for sometime now. She has been helping her deh-deh and sook-sook to put Ah Tai to bed, help lift her legs to the bed and quickly grab the blanket by holding at one edge to help cover Ah Tai :)
• Loves to wear her socks and shoe on her own. But whenever she get to sit down on a chair on anywhere, she wants to take off her shoes and socks immediately and the cycles goes around several times during church services. 

Communication and Social Skills

• Whenever she sees deh-deh peeling the apples, she would say “deh-deh peel”.
• Understands the “buy” term. Whenever we are telling her something had gone or finish, she would suggest us to “buy”. At times, when someone asked her who bought her the shoes/stationaries, she would go “Ah-mee/Deh-deh (or whoever who has bought her that something accurately) buy (bought)”
• Surprised us by saying “ka-choon” for eggs in Hakka. Not sure where did she picked that up from.
• She imitated us during vocal training and it was seriously funny.
• Can distinguish charge and change. When she was half way watching YouTube on the tablet and had a sudden shut-down, she quickly handed it to us and say “ah mee/deh-deh chas (charge)”. On another occasion, when i told her that her diapers are soiled and almost ‘exploded’, she would say “chash” (change). Whenever she got bored with the baby songs at Ah Tai’s, she would request her gu-po to change into another DVD.
• Other words she can say: ‘eh-paste’ (toothpaste), egg-tart, ‘eh-q’ (thank you), ‘eh-go’ (Ergo when she wants me to carry her like a kangaroo with the Ergo carrier)
• She had a fall when she was sitting on Ah-Tai’s walking aid with SIL pushing her around at Ah Tai’s place. She fell because the sitting pane flipped over due to imbalance weight (she was sitting too near to the edge). Upon reaching Ah Tai’s place that evening, she was crying loudly and insisted me to carry her right away. When i asked what happened, she complained about the slight bruise on the knee and told me that “ta-choo pushed” (040816). LOL.
• Whenever she chance upon something with numeral characters i.e counters, clock; she would start uttering 1,2,3,4,5,6, 8,910.
• Can imitate the sound animal produces; a monkey (along with a chimpanzee gestures), horse, dog, rooster, elephant, and more.  

Emotional Development

• Shows affection to her plush toys and Barbie. Whenever she gets close to them, she would soften down her voice and say “Hi barbie” and sometimes generously shared bob-bob with them.
• She chanced upon my c-sect wound one day and called them “butt-butt” *roll eyes* When I pretended I was in pain, she grimaced and immediately run to get my Shaklee herbal blend and say “put ork-ork” (i.e york-york aka medicine in Hakka). She’s indeed a darling when she is in a good mood.

Food and Feeding

• Although she doesn't eat much, she doesn't want to be left behind during our meal times. She has been sitting on her high chair for meals at home. Whenever we dine out, she would request for her “bb-chair”.
• During her meal times, she would request for soup, “choi-choi” (i.e vegetable) upon her request and chicken wings if there is. 
• So far, she has tried long beans, spinach, cauliflowers, brocolli. Despite she has been requesting for "choi-choi" every other night, she has only been licking the gravy or taking in very small bites only. 

Records

• Registered a mild fever, cough & flu and cried her lungs out during our visit to the doctor (090816) and that caused her to loss quite a bit of weight.
• Celebrated her second birthday on the exact day. 

Sleeping Patterns

• Covers herself up with the comforter and says ‘oi oi’ during bedtime.
• She has been saying “night night” to the boss and I every other night. But, on the blue moon (290716), she sponteneously went “ah-mee, deh-deh night night”. Followed on with “bear oi-oi (i.e sleep), bob-bob (offering the bear her mommy’s mammary gland), and oi-oi (covering teddy up with comforter).
• Still waking up at night requesting for ‘milk-milk’ for 2-3 times nightly. Each time before and after dwoning her 6oz of milk, she would request for bob-bob.
• She favours right bob better than the left. Probably because it has higher yield during my pumping days. At times, when I offer her leftie, she would “press” to assure if there’s still supply. Upon seeing milk squirting out, she looked satisfied and would quickly lean over and suckling happily (040816).

Her Firsts

• Received her first attendance gift upon clocking in for the 10^th time to RE Class (140816). She was given the chance to draw her lucky number and got a Hello Kitty stationary set, very much to her delight.
• Received a few units of Sanrio merchandise – Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, Pompompurin (McD Happy Meals), courtesy of her sook-sook. She has been naming the male Twin Star character as Jude Jude (her cousin brother), and taking the female as herself :P

Busy like a bee

The peak season has dawn. I was kept busy since last two weeks and I foresee this to subside until early of next year. I was literally caught in the quicksand and desperately grasping onto the life line. It has been a non-stop whirlwind of activities both from the domestic and professional front. Tired and feeling so overwhelmed but I am constantly reminding myself to be grateful. I seldom feel this ‘productive’ and I am trying hard to stay ahead of deadlines. At the moment, I have to prioritize my to-do-list. I have kept aside my ‘Racing Car’ and long overdue photo-book project, missed out a few of Missy’s milestone updates, slowing down with my baking experiments and not to mention, trying to do less online shopping these days (easier said than done) :P

A sneak peek into tomorrow's celebration

TGIF! Throughout this week, I was working on a mini animal themed birthday celebration for Missy. My preparation was mainly on the table, deco and maybe a couple of simple menu. Food and cake were sweetly delegated and well taken care of by the family members. It was simply therapeutic after a busy day at work :) I couldn't believe tomorrow is the day! Unlike last year, we had a ‘girly themed’ DIY party but the adults had more fun compared to the birthday girl since she was the one and only 4th Pang generation in the house. This year, also surrounded by all adults but I bet she would enjoy better since she had so much fun blowing off candles last week and all these while, she loved being sung ‘Happy Birthday’ song – during her deh-deh, yeh-yeh and ah-mee's birthday :) Next, the boss and I must make the effort to go for our annual check up, I will busy planning, researching, emailing, frequenting several agencies/institutions/sites and sorting out our itinerary for this coming working holidays in September whilst the boss is making preparation for his upcoming conference to China next month. On another note, we are still contemplating if we should bite the bullet whether we should be driving back to my hometown for the first time instead of flying home this coming Raya Haji's holiday. 

RE Family Day 2016

Our little Missy took part in her first ever Family Day a few weeks ago (170716). It was such a meaningful event for me because I have been seeing young children participating in such events last year when Abby was just a couple of months and I never expected that we will be participating too that soon (a year later) with Abby being the youngest kid in the class. I have been counting down 3 since 3 weeks ahead after getting our invitation card. 

Every family get to move around to collect stamps where these will be accumulated for prize redemption. Each family will be given a form each according to the number of children. Before moving around, we had a stroll around the redemption counter and Missy was attracted by a Hello Kitty luggage tag that cost 5 stamps. Hence, we made up our mind to achieve our 5 stamps quickest as possible for the redemption. 

Every stations were packed with people and we picked the one with minimal crowd. We started off with the fishing game. A family must be able to fish out 6 fishes in a span of 2 minutes, and the kid must contribute at least 1 out of the 6 fishes. While the boss was fishing from an adult distance, Abby and I were fishing from a closer distant (kid range). We earned our first stamp here and decided to return for our subsequent attempts.

 

Next, we went to the marble maze. Luck was on Abby as she managed to collect 3 points, as per requirement from her 5 attempts.  Each station can be frequented thrice at three different times (non-continuous basis). Another stamp collected :). 

After that, we visited the Nerf gun station. The queue was long and Missy got so busy going around as the surrounding was rather familiar to her; with BILs supervising the station and all the Nerf guns were her deh-deh’s. For this station, we were required to hit a minimum of 3 cards with one of them must be contributed by the child with about 6 attempts if I have not mistaken. The boss aced his part easily while Missy and I spent the remaining bullets to hit the child requirement. 

We returned to the marble station to have our second round of game and luck was on our side. We managed to get 4 stamps before heading to the water balloon session. Upon seeing those colorful mini balloons, she was head over heels. Here, I was asked to throw the balloons and the boss & Missy teamed up to fetch the balloon. Only 3 balloons were required as per the conditions for kid’s category. So, it was easy peasy for us and we got our 5th stamp and quickly ran to redeem her Hello Kitty luggage tag. We emerged as the first prize redeemer of the day :P

Then, we decided to have a short break by visiting the jigsaw puzzle station where the puzzle was literally finished by the 3 of us, with Missy completing and inserting a couple pieces of them.

We managed to stroll around and played all the games including coconut bowling (outdoor game), dart the balloon, hula-hop, touch & sense (where Missy was given the privilege to see, touch & tell being the youngest participant) and returning to some of the station to fill up our quotas. By the end of the session, we managed to collect a total of 21 stamps which is equivalent to 21 points. 

The only station that we did not manage a single stamp was Station 10, where Missy called as "throw shoe" while gesturing slipper tossing with her leg. Each participant is required to put on a flip flop and fling it towards respective footprints with different points, whereas 1, 3, 5 and 0 with 3 attempts for kid and adult representative. A stamp will be granted upon the collection of 20 points. 

We managed to redeem 4 items namely; a Hello Kitty luggage tag, a Hello Kitty coinbox, a smiley cup, a sticker set costing 5 points each, and a Hello Kitty pencil of 1 point. We really enjoyed the event and the little girl was so happy but too tired and slept for a good 3 hours of nap before heading out to the playground in the afternoon.