No, I am talking about an iPhone game that Caitlin has taken to.

It is called Tap Zoo.

So why am I talking about this?

I am quite glad I stumbled upon this game, actually.

A little like SimCity, the game presents an empty plot, which is actually an island, and Caitlin has some “capital” to play with to start building her zoo. Starting with small animals, Caitlin quickly learned that she cannot start spending too quickly (budget) on other animals and infrastructure, and has to wait (patience) for these small animals to earn (income) money when visitors come visit her zoo. As her earnings build (savings) only then can she start buying more expensive things.

I have tried to coach her on spending wisely on “more important” things, like building proper pavements, not needing too many rangers and keepers yet, etc, but I don’t think she gets those yet. Looks like town planning or architecture isn’t going to be something she will grow up to be You can see her poor attempt at building a footpath there! I have also tried to explain to her that selling those items does not get her back the same amount she paid the first time, that she had better planned it all first instead of buying and then selling it back at a loss.

Still, the game “plays by itself” in that it is saved over the cloud, and when she comes back to it later her income actually would have grown. So, recently she has been letting it earn her money, and quoting me her savings

Now that’s passive income! I should harp on this to her and make her think about “investing” in things that generate income without much effort.

Heh.

Everyone has their styles. Some hold their groins scurrying and yelling “I gotta go I GOTTA GO” while others do so subtly, yet while others (still) don’t tell you AT ALL that they have done it.

As far as a number 1 goes, Caleb won’t tell you. At all. Until you carry him and feel the wet diaper on your forearm, or when you discover the puddle of pee on the floor, while he is still running around being his 2year old self discovering and/or copying what his older sister does.

For his number 2′s however, is something I haven’t seen “done” before.

I understand everyone needs their privacy, whether it’s cos the poop is gonna stink, or that it’s simply because it’s the action of pooping. But for a 2 year old, what’s “privacy”? So it is with a lot of laughter of adorableness when we hear about, and then get to see, how my boy does it.

In private.

When you kinda suddenly discover him missing, you start to wonder whether he’s okay- but more often than not it’s because he has run to some corner of the room/house; preferably behind something, and pushing. It doesn’t matter if the pusher is 2 or 20 years old, I believe all humans push the same way. It becomes a lot more “funny” when it’s on a 2 year old boy. The same slight-squirm, the same red-face. Only standing up, hiding in some corner.

When we discover him “midway” he is somewhat apprehensive, don’t-come-any-closer kinda gesture. Dunno why. Perhaps at (only?) 2 he is starting to feel shame and embarrassment already. This idea is emphasised when I tease him (yes this Daddee teases his kids)- at any “usual” moment I’d look at him and say “Ngg ngg? Ngg ngg??” (the local baby talk for pooping; I think you can imagine how that term came about!) where he’d quite vehemently declare “Mai! MAI!” (which till today we are wondering whether he is trying to speak Hokkien dialect when most of what he hears is Cantonese where “no” is “moi”, not the Hokkien “mai”) as if the act of it is shameful.

Not that we make fun of him, maybe he is starting to develop his own self awareness and image (self respect?)

For now, I will still laugh at him. It’s okay if he develops a complex surrounding pooping. Having a complex surrounding pooping is okay compared to “performance anxiety” surrounding peeing, at the men’s room urinal.

Heh.

Granted it would always be the parents’ fault if children don’t get sufficient sleep/not going to bed early enough. Of late, I have found that Caitlin would still wake at around the same time in the morning, even if it wasn’t a school day (much like last week’s week-long break), even if she did not retire on time. She still gets her afternoon naps, so I am a little relieved that she would still be getting some growing-time (research says that baby lambs can actually grow cm’s while sleeping; let alone the rest the brain requires).

Still, no excuses though.

Of late on schooldays, I have also started waking her a little later than earlier this year- I have started waking her almost 30min later now. Decided on this because, other than both of us getting a little more sleep, I had also found that she used to be waiting to leave, all dressed and ready and catching a bit more of Playhouse Disney in the meantime.

Waking her this morning wasn’t as difficult as Monday morning this week (cos we were all at a relative’s wedding dinner and all retired very much later than usual). Still, being her usual self she was moping around and taking too long doing everything (getting her morning dose of milk, teeth-brushing, washing up).

Instead of grunting at her, I tried this: “You know, if you wanna do things so slowly, then Daddee will have to wake you earlier so that you won’t be late for school… Either you do things quickly and not be day dreaming and wake up a bit later/get to sleep some more, or I wake you earlier.”

Knowing that sleep is quite precious, I think it may actually work. “OKAY OKAY..”

Not to contradict myself, I didn’t have the time to go get the recent “toy” I bought her. I got her a cardboard clockface from MPH for RM6.90 (if I recall correctly) with movable hands and hour and minutes on the face. I have been trying to teach her how to read the clock.

I had wanted to show her what I meant about waking earlier. But “I will have to wake you even before the sky turns bright” was enough to drive the message home.

Let’s hope she sticks to it.

I have mentioned before about Caitlin’s creative streak. When we are at home just chilling and the kids are watching the idiot box, Caitlin would actually “multitask” and do some handicraft, using the scrap A4 papers that HM and I bring home from the office.

She’d make her own pretend mobile phone, camera, toll card, baton (I think she means the wand that an orchestra conductor uses), just last weekend it was a walkie-talkie. She’d get me to play along sometimes using the corresponding walkie-talkie, be the toll plaza / booth, or she’d just draw something; lately it’s the not-so-surprising-for-her-age family “portrait” complete with Daddee having blue hair and as stick-figure skinny as he’d wished he was.

She has an interest in this art stuff, just like Daddee… okay she does acknowledge the joke about Daddee’s hair being blue, so it’s not really a talent gone awry.

Anytime that Playhouse Disney channel shows a 5-minute filler of anything remotely handicrafty or sketchy, she’d head straight for the pile of A4′s and try and repeat what she saw.

So, how do I cultivate this talent, or at least, this interest in her? Our working hours are such that we really only get to see and spend time with her from dinner onwards, and before long it’d be her bedtime already.Otherwise it’s reading with her, either her story picture books or her school books for revision. On weekends, we try and treat the kids by simply visiting my folks, the mall, the pool if Caitlin isn’t still having the sniffles / cough.

Art classes at the shops in the malls and the works that the kids bring home do look impressive, but it’s all assisted and guided in that (I believe) the kids are told what to do. Caitlin does these things all from her own imaginative play. And I don’t want to stifle this flow of imagination and crafts.

But, as Moomykin had suggested in the last blog post, maybe it’s time (dare I say or suggest to the OCD-ed HM??) for Caitlin to start with water colour next??

Here she is making gameboard pieces. She had already cut them up (yes, with grown-up scissors; been at it since last year I think) and here she is decorating them.

Anyway, Caitlin’s seen Daddee clap-smack mozzies whenever I see them. That’s apparently how one (adults) catches mozzies, it seems.

So this (Sunday) morning, when Caitlin came in to wake Daddee up with her often homemade handicraft- this time being a “surprise” board game that she’s developed (from the pile of A4 scrap from the office; she’s drawn lines on it and cut up another into shapes of whatevers), she saw one flying around within her reach.

Clap-smacking like she does when she emulates Daddee, she thought it was funny. Looking and inspecting her right palm, she notices a faint black marking. “Daddee what’s this?”

Already knowing the answer, I asked her to check her left hand. At first there was nothing, then she looked again and saw the dead mozzie between her fingers!

It’s actually quite funny to watch a 4 year old being freaked out! “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!” She was a mix of being all icky, freaked, funny

Having a lifelong hatred for mozzies myself, I kinda praised her for her good aim

buh-bye;

Grr-grr- “go-go” is what is uttered whenever we are ready to go out. Now he’s the one telling us we should go out.

Ma’am-mee (nope, still not calling Daddee);

circa and dar (“circle” and “star”, when Daddee was doodling with him);

tonne-ner whenever we enter a tunnel, or even under overhead bridges that remotely resemble anything undercover;

Runs around in circles of present-moment’s object of desire on the floor- a toy, a piece of paper, etc.

Caitlin:
She was pretty proud that she could rubber-band tie her rolled up doodling (“treasure map”) with a double twirl all by herself.

Caitlin’s cough and sniffles is getting better; thank goodness there’s no fever otherwise I’d be bringing her straight to a doctor, for obvious reasons of what’s in the air these days.

It’s mid afternoon. I think we’ll grr-grr to Midvalley using the tonne-ner parking, since really there’s nothing to do otherwise at home

She’s still got some audible phlegm in her throat, though she isn’t coughing anymore, it’s still there. Apparently she had also promised Teacher Rachel a show-and-tell of her collection of fridge magnets from home. She told me of this on Thursday night when I was tucking her in.

That morning I made the mistake of reminding her that it’s swimming day. All psyched up, she had been carrying her plastic bag of swim gear all morning wherever she was whilst getting ready. HM reminded me of her still-present phlegm, that we should wait for another week before she is allowed back in the pool (the last time I forgot, her cough came back in full force after a swim with Daddee; and we know how easily she pukes when she gets into a coughing fit).

I told her “no, can’t go swimming; wait for another week”. She wouldn’t have it. Repeated Elmer Fudd vs Bugs Bunny of yes no yes no only aggravated the respective individual emotions of our positions. Of course being the Daddee I managed to almost wrestle the bag off her. Okay I did it as gently as I could.

We were already in the car, basement of our building. Every morning we’d be lugging not just our respective bags; there is also Caleb’s gear for the day, some washing to be done, and Caleb himself aided by our helper. Settled in, buckling our seatbelts, feeling pretty shitty about the whole ordeal already, and she says, between the teary jerks of breaths, “DADDEE WE FORGOT THE MAGNETS!!”

There were really 3 options to handle this: (1) Go upstairs alone. That would be the quickest. But that also means leaving them alone in the car in the basement- toddler, 14 month old, a foreigner; (2) All go up together. Safest option. But taking the longest, making us late for school and work. (3) Fuggedaboutit.

I declared option (3). Caitlin goes into a wailing fit. Feet kicking, top of voice crying protesting she wants to go back upstairs to get the magnets, why wasn’t I listening to her.

I respect that she wants to honour her promise to Teacher Rachel. She was even looking forward to this- I could tell. But either (1) or (2) would mean we’d both be late. I even twisted the argument back at her; not a very nice thing to practise on a toddler I admit; that she didn’t listen to me either that morning when we said no to swimming, that she didn’t listen to us.

I felt bad about her not able to indulge in a simple swimming activity. It didn’t rain that day and the swim session did go ahead. She would, like before, have to remain in class hearing all the cheers and splashes downstairs.

But I felt worse that I couldn’t let her carry out her simple request of going back upstairs to get the magnets. This wasn’t something bad at all. For the longest time I had been instilling in her to honour her word/promise, and this was one example- that she wanted to show the magnets as promised. I was consoling / coaching her to say to Teacher Rachel that she is sorry she forgot to bring the magnets, but that she would be late if she/we turned around to go get them, that she didn’t want to be late, and that she would bring them on Monday instead.

In some ways I was also just lazy.

But what would you have done?

She also knows her roman numbers already (or do I mean gregorian?? You know- the numbers on your keyboard); proved herself repeatedly in the lift and (since then) any other places now.

Come time to teach her the Chinese calligraphy of 1 – 10, we stumble.

She can point from 1 – 10 and cite them. Jump in randomly pointing at any calligraphy-number with “What’s this?” and she stumbles.

If they are written in ascending order, and if she knows that they are, she can sometimes get by.

How? She cheats.

It’s quite funny watching a 4 year old citing something in their head, and visually counting without fingers, matching the citing and jump/skipping eye-counting!

At least she thought of that herself!

Today he did these….

And then, for the first time(s?) in his life, he stood!

The following pic was actually not the first time he managed to stand. That first time that he did manage to stand, we broke into cheers and applause that frightened him, and literally made him weak at the knees!

But it wasn’t long before he managed again!

Well done, son! Heh heh!

So, soon he will be a walking babbling little boy for the rest of us to chase!

DAh-DAH-DAH duh duh duh…nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn na-na-na….

Generally, do babies start walking first, or start talking first? I can’t remember this for Caitlin; I do remember that she started walking when she was still in her nappies with an external anti-wet shorts, similar to the ones Caleb is wearing above!

And being the cheeky uncle that I am, during times of emailing and IM-ing with her I pressured her highlighting things like “Are we on schedule?”, “You do realise that it’s now only seven days till the event”, when we (she) still hadn’t settled on which doorgifts would be best for the occassion / guests, let alone allowing time for the suppliers to come back with a quote and also getting them made!

She’s been frantically visiting the venue, executing the questions we had about where and how the tables will be arranged, sorting the seating by guests, getting her team (of cousins) to memorise the tables to help ushering, where to position the tv / screen (we have a slideshow of photos of last 50+ years), compiling the photos, “do they have wireless mics”, “this doorgift is better than that”, and getting her surprise gift completed, etc.

Yes, she’s done a surprise gift too.

At this juncture, from my own observations I’d say she has experienced at least some of these emotions!

• Some small forms of accomplishment (getting things in order for the event)
• Asking for favours
• Asking authorities (her older relatives) to stick to deadlines!
• Gratitude
• Controlling some (anxiety-related) emotions
• Pressured!
• Can’t please everyone!
• Panic!

Pretty good training just before heading off to uni!

Will let you know how the event goes!

Photos courtesy of my brother’s Flickr collection

Growing up here alone would already expose them to the various Chinese dialects; and especially in Kuala Lumpur where Cantonese is widely spoken and used for everyday transactions.

Already, spending her days at Grandma’s after school, hearing them speak Cantonese, and being exposed to the Chinese soapies they watch just before dinner, are already slowly but surely equipping her with the language. Hot Mummee and I cannot use this as our secret language anymore- yes we’ve benn caught out a few times already! Hokkien or Fujian is my dialect, but I’d rather she knows how to speak Mandarin well first.

I am not too worried about Caitlin not getting enough chances to learn English. Both Hot Mummee and I speaks very good our English, and also given the podcasts and TV that she watches I seriously doubt she’d be missing out on being able to learn this language good.

This week Caitlin went back to pre-school. We had earlier enrolled her in the Chinese medium for her age, called Pre-2; she’s just finished Pre-1. Then, few days before Christmas the school calls up and says that due to insufficient numbers, that syllabus is cancelled.

Oh, believe me- Hot Mummee can kick up a fuss when she wants to. And I let her do most of the talking! Being the date it was, they didn’t leave us much time to look for alternative schools, and we wanted Caitlin to start being exposed to Mandarin this year, since it will be 2011 when she start proper primary school lessons in Mandarin in full force. Leaving only 2010 for this exposure frankly will not be enough to prepare her.

The long and short of it (mostly long!), we have come to an agreement with the school on this: We enrolled her into Pre-3 level Mandarin syllabus- meaning she is actually in the group a year older, and where she will probably repeat Pre-3 again in 2010. We haven’t highlighted this fact to Caitlin, only that she will be in a new class (“yay!”) with new friends (“yay!”), just not the older part.

So on Monday I dropped her off at school. She’s “graduated” to attending a classroom upstairs, where her ex-peers are still downstairs. I walked her to the classroom door and the new teacher took her in. I went downstairs to check some things with the principal, and went back upstairs to see how she was doing; seeing as the class would now ALL speak Mandarin instead of her most comfortable English, and that they were older, and likely already knew each other from being together from last year.

I peeped.

She was standing backed against the wall, between first and second row of chairs / tables, body weight on one hand on a chair, watching someone / something incessantly / interestingly out of my sight. She had that very apprehensive look on her face that she gets when she is very unsure of what is going on / if she is in very unfamiliar territory.

She turned to look at the doorway where we parted earlier; probably cos in her peripheral vision she saw a figure (me).

Her face relaxed, broke into a very wide grin, and waved the kind of kid-wave that shakes the body.

She is okay.

I waved back. It’s okay. So I left. All warm and fuzzy.

I should have known, being on a Sunday that the chance was slim in getting tickets. It was after all the first weekend of its screening. In the end, to manage her disappointment, we “settled” for Madagascar 2. I think she enjoyed it; despite asking “Is it finished yet?” some 5 times. I think she was more determined to sit through the whole movie than to enjoy the story- we kept saying how you shouldn’t leave the cinema before the end of the movie, like what she did during her first movie experience with Wall-E.

So anyway.

I parked at The Gardens, we walked briskly to get to the top floor of Midvalley. At The Gardens, initially I could hear someone speaking very loudly at the other end of the mall. I had thought it was just a kid making repeated noises. As we walked toward the middle of the mall, the voice was also coming closer. I realised the repeated “noise” was “Michael…. MICHAEL….” and it was coming from a lady.

She was pushing a stroller. Beside her was a boy walking along; no, he was actually running to stay beside his mum.

She was looking very very worried.

“MICHAEL! MICHAEL!……”

I couldn’t stay around to see what was going on next; after all we were (also) in a hurry. I went down the escalators at the middle of the mall, looking up to see them pass the top of it onward to the other end of the mall.

It dawned on me what was going on. The lady and the boy passed another party, probably Sunday shoppers too; gesturing to other probable shoppers out of our sight. A small person, nee high.

Caitlin was also looking, probably only because of the noise. I asked if she could guess what was going on (I have started to ask her to assess situations, lately).

I don’t think she could; she said she didn’t know. I told her what I thought was likely going on…

What would you do if you had lost your toddler in similar way?

What “survival skills” would you teach your child to tackle such an incident?

I had a similar experience myself before I started going to school, so many years ago. It was a beach outing and I had wandered off “base” so far that I lost where we “camped” on the beach. You can imagine the horror when my family couldn’t find me, at the beach.

The long and short of it is- somehow I had memorised (I can’t recall how or who made me) my dad’s car registration plate. That’s all I could offer the cops, who later found it in the parking lot, and placed me on it waiting for someone to claim me.

In this day and age, similarly I guess a child could be made to memorise mobile phone numbers…

What else?

Merely small stuff that I’d like my kids to have / equipped with / to be skilled at.

• Some form of martial arts
  To me, I think this is quite an important “skill” to have. Not only is it a form of exercise, it can also be some kinda self defense for fending off (to an extent) bad guys. It builds confidence, and also kinda sexy on girls
• Know how to swim
  Again, a form of regular exercise. I think humans should know how to swim too. This may be a surprise to “sporting nations” like Australia, but believe me, there are families and folks here who don’t know how to swim.
• Bike riding
  As a matter of personal preference, to me whether or not this is a regular sport is not important. What is important is at least knowing how to cycle…
• Can cook
  There will be some point in any adult life where one will have to cook for themselves- I know I had to, while attending uni and living with flatmates etc, where we may have to take turns in cooking. At least know how to cook some pasta and fry a decent wok of rice! (Not necessarily having both these at the same meal though)
• Doing the dishes
  While this is related more on one’s upbringing and contributing to around the house, this is also a skill that one needs to have. Sometimes there are old ladies that guys need to impress when visiting them (or their daughters!)
• Some level of street smart
  I don’t mean Jason Bourne type of street smart, but enough sense to watch out for things like: Avoid walking into secluded areas, know when someone is trying to scam you, walking to the car with the car keys in hand sharp end pointing out, locking the car doors after getting in, making sure the house is secure at all times, etc.

What life-skills can’t you live without?