Joey Is Growing Up Well

Haven't really been blogging about her growth & development for quite a while, so thought I'd just note this down.

As at 17 May 2008, Joey is 2 years, 1 & a half months old. She weighs 14 kg and is 0.95m tall. Her favorite foods are rice, sausages, soups, cheese, biscuits and sweets (!!!!). She likes vegetables, especially the stalk parts, but she doesn't really like fruits. She loves Barney, Elmo, Minnie Mouse and Doraemon. She loves to play with balls & balloons, has a liking for cars and prefers singing & dancing to drawing & painting.

She is rather effectively bilingual. She understands most of the things we say, whether in English or Mandarin, and is able to communicate what she wants in both languages as well. In fact, you know how some parents will purposely communicate in Mandarin because their kid understands only English. For Isaiah & I, we sometimes talk in Cantonese because we don't want her to know what we are saying. We've had too many past experiences to know that we got to be careful cos she has sharp ears!

For example, I would be telling Isaiah, 'Better don't let her see the sweet you are eating, otherwise she will want to eat as well...' and she heard that, especially the word 'sweet', and she goes, 'I want to eat sweet!' and goes about prying open Isaiah's mouth.

She is learning to communicate using a few sentences now instead of just 1 single sentence or few words. For example, she said this whole paragraph the other day, lack of connecting words only but still easy to understand:

"Papa eat sweet. 牙齿 pain pain. See doctor. 打针！Papa 可怜哦！"

The only major problem with her is that she is super singlish. She mixes English and Mandarin in one sentence like nobody's business. Sigh. It's probably because my MIL speaks to her in Mandarin and we sometimes speak to her in English, so depending on what words she knows in either English, she strings them into proper sentences. For example, she only knows how to say 可怜, but not pitiful, so she can only say the Mandarin word. =P I sure hope this problem will be solved when she goes to school proper next year!

It gets alot easier now that she can remember things better. We can ask her whether she saw my handphone or the TV remote control, and she would tell me where they are. I can ask her what she did during the day in the office nursery, and she would tell me what she did in simple sentences like, 'Play with baby'... sometimes I would hear of information like, 'I beat beat Debbie'.. or 'I pushed Nicole'... and when I checked, it really did happen, and so I could quickly go apologise to their parents.. =P

It is really so fun to play and communicate with her at this stage of her life. Alot of joy and fun watching her eating well and growing up strong. =)