Crafts: Projects for September 2010

For this month, I have slowed down the pace of his projects due to some unforeseen events at home.  Here are what we have done...


Sheep - Found this project from the internet and decided to try it out with Ian.  I cut out the head, tail and legs beforehand, and let Ian paste cotton balls on a paper plate.  In case you are wondering, I helped Ian fill in the gaps between the cotton balls that he pasted.  After that I guided him to paste the other body parts onto the body.

Lion - Another simple project... I cut out a yellow circle beforehand, and drew the face.  I showed Ian how to mix the red and yellow paints to get the orange paint for the lion's mane.  He painted the paper plate first and after it dried, Ian made snippets around the edge of the plate to get the mane.  After that, I guided him to paste the face onto the plate.

Hand Prints -  A 'lazy' project!  I showed Ian how to mix white and blue to get a lighter shade.  After that, I gave him the brush to dab on his palms and paint at his free will.

Resources: 
Artists Helping Children - Paper Plates Crafts
Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

Ian Is 2.5 Years Old

More noticeable development for the past month was his vast improvement in speech.  When we first sought help from a speech therapist in June (~ 3 months ago), Ian could hardly pronounce words with 3 syllables.  Now, he is able to join a few words together such as "I don't want", "Thank you, (whoever)", and pronounce some words with 3 syllables.

We are pleased that he can finally say the letter "W" properly, though now he still has difficulty in pronouncing some lengthy words like "helicopter" and "octopus" (which becomes "oc-pus-to").  Ian is also making more effort to express himself, although sometimes we did not manage to catch what he wanted to convey. He has also displayed some interest in using preposition, such as "in the floor", "in the top".  We are still trying hard to correct his wrong usage though.

Socially, Ian is able to recognise some of his classmates.  I only realised this when I showed him the photos that his teacher had taken, and he started to point out his classmates with names.  He seems to be well-adapted to going to school now, because he does not become clingy when we drop him in the class.  Instead, he will wave bye-bye to us.

Another more notable development is his progress toilet-training.  Now, he is able to keep the pants dry at home and through his naps.  There had been a few accidents on and off, but I guess that is to be expected.  He has also managed to keep his pants dry when we go out for a short trip to my mom's place for dinner.  I wonder when we can start to put him in cloth for longer trips?  (We are two clueless parents who managed to toilet-train our boy up to this stage!)

Thanks to his toilet-training drills, I have let him put on his pants by himself.  Most of the time, he is able to put them on correctly (label at the back).  With loose tees, he can take them off on his own and sometimes, put them on without help.

Ian has also managed to draw a simple sketch of a face, but his favourite thing to draw is still a balloon! 

It had been a busy month for us, and Ian spent a lot of time with his 2 cousins during their one week holiday.  Now, they are officially his top favourite people (perhaps they top the list over us!).

Last Lesson at LNT

Today marked the end of Ian's lessons at LNT.  He has been attending their lessons since Jan 2009 (he was about 8 months at that time), and it has been nearly 2 years.

Some of the stuff taught in the class were pretty helpful in his development, such as drawing mazes, crafts, counting, learning the names of common furniture, logic blocks, cutting.  These activities gave me a clue on the areas on which I could start to teach him at home. 

However, Ian is still unable to pay attention to the class, especially when it comes to flash cards.  He has just started to appreciate the songs, but as for some activities such as differentiating an object from a group, stacking 3D blocks, he was pretty much behind because he joined the 2007 children. 

We wondered whether it was because he skipped a year and missed out the foundations of building these 3D blocks, etc.  Anyway, we decided that it was time for a break.  He was not concentrating much in the class, and we had been pretty tired bringing him there and forcing him to concentrate in the class.

Perhaps it was good to try out other classes to see whether something else would be more appropriate for his interests.

Toilet-Training: Diaper-free Days At Home

This week, Ian has caught a cough and a runny nose.  Hence, we have been keeping him at home since Tuesday because his nose turned into a leaking tap.  I took this chance to try putting him on his training pants for the whole day. 

Tuesday - Perhaps he was not used to the extended hours of being diaper-free, and poo-ed in the pants.  However, he did a good job of keeping it dry otherwise.  It was my first attempt to let him have his nap in the training pants and it was a success.  I also ventured to let him go diaper-free for going out (fetched Hubby from work and had dinner at my mom's place).  However, he peed in the car seat on the way to fetch Hubby.  Hubby said he was still not ready, and changed him back into his diapers at my mom's place.

Wednesday - Oops, Ian had a little accident.  He poo-ed a little into the pants and quickly ran to the toilet for the rest.  He also peed in his pants once, but had kept it dry through his nap.  I tried to let him go diaper-free for our short outing again.  This time, I reminded him repeatedly not to pee in the car and not to pee on the floor.  He managed to keep the car seat dry.

Thursday - It was a dry day...yippie!  Again, I put him in his training pants on our short outing in the evening.  I reminded him repeatedly again not to pee in the car and on the floor.  He managed to keep it dry, but wet his pants while playing with his cousins at my mom's place.  Hubby changed him back into diapers again. 

Friday - Ian peed once in the training pants again, even at home.  I wonder if this is a regression?  However, he had kept it dry otherwise.  Once we reached my mom's place in the evening, Hubby brought him to the toilet immediately to empty his bladder.  However, he did not pee, and wet his pants in a while later. He also managed to pee into the toilet bowl successfully after the little accident.

After these few days of "training", I realised that Ian needs to go to the toilet frequently in order to keep his pants dry.  I wonder is it normal for children to go frequently?  It is going to be hard to keep him diaper-free for longer trips outside.  :(

Crafts: Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

This afternoon, Ian woke up earlier than usual from his afternoon nap, and so I decided to make a paper lantern with him for the upcoming Chinese festival.

I drew lines on the construction paper for Ian to cut, and then helped him paste onto a paper towel roll.  Then, Ian got to paste some stickers as decoration. 

This was an activity that he enjoyed tremendously...

After he had completed with the stickers, I poked 2 holes and pulled a chenille stem through them as the handle.

I was not able to find a stick around the house for a proper handle, so Ian had to make do with the chenille stem for the time-being.  He played with it for a while, almost destroying the lantern.

When Hubby returned home at night, Ian showed the lantern to his Daddy, and Daddy found a balloon stick for the handle!  Now, it looked better...

We wish a Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to followers of this blog!

Toilet Training: He Stood!

Our little darling gave us a huge surprise on Wednesday night!  As usual, he went to the toilet himself to pee and after I heard the music from his FP potty, I got up from my seat to help him with the cleaning up.  I was extremely surprised to see what he did to his potty - his urine was all over his potty chair and on the floor.  It meant that he had urinated while standing up.  Although it was a big mess, I was very happy that he had progressed to the next step in his toilet training.

I had earlier tried to teach him how to do this, but nothing came out as he stood at the toilet bowl.  And all of a sudden, Ian had decided to stand and urine.  We scratched our heads and wondered what changed him?

We have also started to put him on his training pants when we go over to my mom's place for dinner.  He wet his pants the first time we tried it, but it was probably because he did not detect his urge to go as he had a big quarrel with his cousin and was crying non-stop.  Over the last few days, Ian had managed to keep his pants dry until we returned home.  Once, he was able to tell us that he wanted to go to the toilet, and had stood to pee at his Por Por's house.

At home over the last couple of days, he had been peeing either standing up or sitting on his potty, depending on his mood.  If he decided to stand, he would use the adult potty and so far, he had not made a mess since his first success.  (Ian, thank you for not adding more mess for Daddy and Mummy to clean up!)

We hope that soon, we could put him on training pants during his afternoon naps too.

A Self-Portrait

Hello, everyone!

This is my self-portrait!

And Mummy helped to write my name under it!

Toilet-Training: A Collection of Potties

We began toilet-training Ian in August, once I received the training pants that I had ordered from Amazon and a Taobao spree.  We had expected it to be difficult, and it was indeed fraught with difficulties.  We had not much idea on how to start, and began by putting him in the training pants at night, after his shower.  This was to let him feel the wetness when he peed or pooed in his underwear.  It was very tiring as he kept dirtying his undies and the floor.

We had no success in getting him to sit on the potty to do his business.  He resisted very strongly whenever we asked him to sit on it.  This is how his first potty looked like (it was one of the wedding gifts from my Mom).

Whenever we asked him to sit on it, he would point to our toilet bowl and once, we even found him hanging over the seat using his hands to prop himself up.  After about 2-3 weeks of futile attempts to get him seated on his own potty, we decided to splurge on the Fisher Price potty.  It was not very easy to find this and we only saw it at Toyrus and Robinsons (not even the John Little or Kiddy Palace branches that we visited).  There was no sale at Robinsons, but we bought it anyway ($79, IIRC).  We felt that it was really expensive as compared to other normal types of potty seats, and when I paid at the cashier, I was rather apprehensive that the money would be wasted.

Hubby assembled the potty when we got home, and it was a big, big relief when Ian happily sat on it and peed.  There was a sensor at the bottom that would activate songs when he peed or pooed, and this was good, because it enabled us to know whether he was successful or not without having to check.

We had this potty for about 3 weeks now, and recently, Ian has been going to it whenever we are at home.  He has been keeping his undies dry most of the time, except for one or two accidents when he leaked a little and ran to the potty.

I checked with his childcare teachers on whether they could help our potty-training by bringing him to the toilet with the other children who were already trained.  However, they told me that Ian must be able to stand and pee before they could do it.  I did not understand the rationale behind this 'rule', but that meant we had to work harder at home and bring the toilet-training one step further before he could go to school without diapers. 

At the current stage, we still had to put him in diapers when going out.  During our recent visit to the child development therapy sessions, we had faced difficulty in finding a child's toilet seat when Ian had wanted to poo, and he ended up doing it in his diapers after enduring it for some time.  Hence, to aid with our training, we decided to get a travel potty.  I spotted this on Amazon and bought it - Potette Plus travel potty.

Hopefully, this is money well-spent too...

Ian Loves Sticker Books

Ian loves stickers, and so we got him sticker books to keep him occupied for a while when we were out of ideas of things to do with him.

His first sticker book was from Usborne - Summer Sticker Book (~$7.70). It contained over 500 stickers and many scenes for children to fill in with the stickers.  Ian was slightly overwhelmed with the mere quantity of stickers for each scene, so we resorted to cut out each sticker page into half or a third for Ian to play for one session.  After about a month or so, Ian finally finished all the pages.  (We have gotten a few more sticker books from Usborne as the quality was good!)

The next sticker book was one of the activity books that I have gotten from a Dangdang spree. This is a simple but educational sticker book and Ian finished it in only 3 days. It could have been finished in an hour, but we limited the number of pages that he could do in a day (about 4-5 pages).

The book was priced at RMB6, so that translated to about S$2 with shipping and GST.  Although the stickers were a little hard to peel off, it was still quite worth the price.