A Mother's Journey: May 2010

We brought Kendrick to take the circle line MRT for the first time so that we could stop by at Promenade station to visit the new Helix Bridge. We sat off in the evening and the weather was really overcast that day. Not very good for pictures, but at least it didn't rain. Kendrick was quite happy and excited to take the MRT as it's something we seldom take. The circle line was was a pleasantly nice journey, not too crowded at the time we took it down and back. So we reached and took a quick walk along the Helix Bridge and checked out the new Marina Bay Sands resort from afar. Haha...guess we'll plan to go there another time :)

Here's some photos we took at the bridge and also Marina Bay Sands resort behind us...

Time flies, it's already May and Kendrick has been attending his playgroup class for about 5 months now. We just went for a Parent-Teacher session today to find out about his progress. Overall, he seems to have learned a lot academically, but there's certainly room for improvement in terms of some gross motor skills, being more independent, gaining more self-confidence and doing things comfortably even though he is in school. We really hope that we can guide him towards another level of improvement in that aspect!

It's funny when you think back about how he was just a little baby who only made cooing sounds back then....and now he's a energetic toddler who can say so much and make decent conversations with you...my boy ah..Mommy will certainly miss this phase of your life a lot! Admittedly, Kendrick's vocal and speech development has made good progress very early on and like now, he loves to sing, and he can even sing hymms that I've taught him via my hymm book :) He seems interested in spelling words too, perhaps a start towards learning to form words by recognition since they learn phonics in school. Kendrick is always asking us how to spell various words that he knows.

Dabbling in music is also something he seems fairly keen on, given that he sees his Aunt play the piano at her home. Kendrick has improved from just banging his hands on the piano to playing note by note with his fingers. He has even tried to play do-re-mi at times. Well, more dabbling in this and hopefully by 3 or 4, we can start him on learning how to play the piano.

We also started to toilet train him in terms of peeing. I've been wanting to try this out and finally took the plunge to do so gradually. The thing is, he understands a lot that we tell him and so it's just a matter or whether he wants to learn. Hence, we started letting him go diaper-less whenever he is not sleeping. We would remind him that if he needs to pee, to let us know and we will go to his potty. He peed on the floor a few times but I guess we are making some progress. He's been able to control his pee for a few hours and has learnt to say so if he needs to pee and successfully peed in the potty a couple of times!! I was really so happy about it whenever he was successful! I guess we are making small progress indeed...so we will just have to take it slowly and continue to encourage him on :) As for the night training, I think I'll have to hold that back a while more...I imagine that to be a next level of nightmare! Haha...As for the poo poo part, it's also another challenge to get him to sit at the potty. There seems to be a stronger psychological barrier on his part to not want to try that. Hmmm..perhaps we'll make progress once he is fully able to go diaper-less?? Gosh, this phase of training is certainly not easy!! Lots of patience needed indeed!

Till the next update, here are some recent photos we took:

Kendrick at a playground in AMK