Double Happiness...: September 2010

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Pigeons At The Park...

We went to the park as usual this morning. The girls were excited as this time we kept aside some bread to feed the tortoises in the lake.

As we were throwing pieces of bread into the lake to feed the tortoises, 2 pigeons nearby who spotted some bread crumbs came near us to eat.

Normally the girls would not be scared but this time the pigeons came a bit too near for comfort until the girls actually had to move to avoid the birds, and by pushing themselves closer to me. As I was squatting down it was difficult for me to balance and Jun Yen fell on her bum onto the floor. Luckily she didn't cry or make a fuss. The diaper must have cushioned the impact, haha...

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Masak Masak...

The girls have been quite keen at playing at cooking for a while now, but lately their repertoire of "dishes" has expanded considerably, as they observe the dishes that they have had over lunches and dinners at home, out at restaurants or even from TV shows.

They were 'cooking' the other day and asked Kongkong (maternal grandfather) what he would like to eat. He answered 'fish head noodle', and JL went 'oh' as if to acknowledge the request. He then asked if she knows how to cook it and she said no. Kongkong then began a cooking lesson for the fish head noodle. JL was attentive while JY was walking around n 'cooking' other dishes for me.

JL was very happy after the lesson and would always 'cook' her newly learnt dish
for me and Kongkong.

Kongkong even taught them how to bake cakes. As usual, JL was the more attentive one. Today they watched a children show which was showing how to bake a flower pot shaped cake and JL was imitating it after the show. This proves that children watch and learn from what they see on TV, which reinforces our belief that it is important to be careful what we let them watch.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Three Questions...

Recently we came up with 3 questions we use to test the girls, and which usually confuses them, especially Jun Yen.

First Question: What is your name?

Second Question: How are you?

Third Question: How old are you?

They know the answers but may not be to the correct question. So what they do is just take a guess. I tried to translate the questions into Mandarin, hoping it would help. Jun Lee is able to answer the questions correctly now but Jun Yen is still guessing, which means she still does not quite understand the questions.

The Parrot...

When the girls were just learning to talk, they'd repeat things we say. My wife would say they were like parrots, and they repeated "Parrot" as well, haha!

A few months back, when they repeated something wifey said, she again said they were parrots. This time however, to her surprise, Jun Lee replied, "No, a parrot is a bird..."

When I heard that I tried getting Jun Lee to say the same thing, but she just smiled.

Monday, September 20, 2010

The Girls and The Baby...

Until recently the girls have always been the youngest among their cousins, until my elder sister gave birth to her second child, a baby boy. When I visited her I would usually bring the girls along.

Both of them have seen tiny babies before but as they grow older they seem to act more like big sisters.

I'd ask them to sing lullabies to the baby when the baby is crying. During one of these occasions when they were trying to pacify the crying baby they did so by caressing him softly while saying "Baby, don't cry..." but at the same time their eyes were glued to the tv that was showing a cartoon.

Another time I was quite surprised when they both said "Baby, don't cry. I am here" (caressing baby softly and then pointing to themselves by putting their hand on their chest). They must have learnt it from us adults who normally console their little ones that way. Haha...

Saturday, September 18, 2010

First Lego Set...

Lego has always been a big part of my childhood, and I used to spend hours playing with them and making the most fantastic things. I never seemed to follow the instructions though... Anyway this isn't about me, so over to wifey...

We've always wanted to buy the girls a Lego set. However most of the sets we saw were either simple Duplo ones or were the complicated ones that required you to read the instructions to build something specific. We preferred the freestyle ones where they could build whatever they put their imaginations to but we couldn't find any satisfactory ones.

We were looking around a supermarket when I was in Melbourne recently and was so happy that we finally found one. We showed the girls the set on Skype when I was there and they were very excited. when I got back home I placed the box on a book shelf in the study. When they entered the room, Jun Yen spotted it right away, which was amazing as the room was quite dark and the light was not turned on yet. She must have owl vision, hehe...

As the girls are still young, we only allow them to play with the bigger pieces and kept aside the smaller ones. We taught them how to build things but they sometimes like to use it as part of their cooking game as part of their "ingredients". This annoys hubby a bit who thinks it's a very pricey toy for them to use to 'cook' rather than build things. But they are after all still small and need time to learn to build things out of them. Besides I can see that they are interested to build things, but they also like to cook as well...

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Channel 552 is cartoon...

After being away for a while to sort things out in Melbourne, I've forgotten the order of the TV channels.

I wanted to let the girls watch cartoons while I do some housework but forgot
what channel it is on. I tried many times, pressing here and there to find it. In the end I gave up and asked the girls what is the cartoon channel...

They both answered together, "Mommy, 552 is cartoon!..." And they were right, 552 is the TViQ channel!