Will be back soon

Mommy knew she'd better post something when she saw the caller ID of Uncle Roy in her cell phone. Grandma and Grandpa, and my two uncles must be dead worried when Mommy didn't post anything for more than a week. Actually, Mommy has been very busy since her summer class started on Mon 29. I am saying REAL BUSY : Mommy is literally burying herself unto stack after stack, and piles after piles of journal articles in the name of RESEARCH. Mommy has to wake up 5am everyday for her class, except Fri (Phew!). Once Mommy is back from class, she would start reading all those new found articles until dinner time when she starts to cook. After dinner, Mommy goes back to her reading again. Though working on research takes up a lot of Mommy's time, Mommy really enjoys the process because she gets to learn about the current best instructional method, and how she would desperately want to apply the best practice out there unto me when she is done. However, despite of Mommy's busy schedule, my learning has never been compromised. Mommy just has to make some good choices to skip reading, and updating blogs, and spend some quality time with me. Mommy hopes to get back to blogging soon, and obviously, Mommy has not called home since class started. In order to ease my Grandparents and uncles' anxiety of what might have happened to us, Mommy spent her precious reading time to update my progress for the past few days. Many things happened of course, and Mommy will try to update more soon.

Rhyming Words

Mommy read to me Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar story book after watching the You Tube posted in Auntie Annie's blog. Mommy picked up one word from the book, "fat" and use this word to teach me the rhyming words after I mastered some of the phonics that Mommy has been teaching me. This evening, Mommy assessed me on my rhyming words of "fat", and Mommy will try to add in more family words.

Harvest

Our snow pea plants have provided our family with 3 servings for the past few days. Mommy hopes more will be on the way.

Independence Day

My patriotic outfit for 4th July

Neat Observation

When Mommy was busy reading her articles, Daddy has to take care of me to make sure that I won't bother Mommy while she was busy with her work. Both Daddy and I were downstairs, and Diao was sitting at his usual place in the couch. Daddy saw me walking towards Diao, and tried to push him down the couch twice, and I succeeded pushing Diao down. Then I looked at Daddy saying "It's not me!, It's not me!" Daddy was surprised and reported to Mommy who was also astonished with my remarks. When on earth I learned about negative form in language? Mommy learned that denial appears around 20 to 25 months, and obviously I am one month ahead the norm. At this preoperational stage, toddlers are not able to see themselves as agent+action, Mommy thinks it's time to apply the strategy of cartooning learned from her language class, so that I am able to see myself in action. How Mommy wished she was the one witnessing it so that intervention could be done using the strategy.

Attributive Construct

Mommy learned that by 24 months, an average child uses two-word utterances frequently, however, almost 90% of the children use attribution and the action construction not until when they are 30 months. So Mommy is very amazed and impressed that I am able to utter the form of attributive + entity at 19 months. Mommy heard me pointing to a red ball lying at the kitchen one day, and I went uttering "red ball", and subsequently from that day onwards, I go around using attributive two word utterances. Even during bath time, instead of telling Mommy, "m", "s", "e" or "x" etc, I will say "Purple 'e', green 'm' or "blue 'x'". One may think that since I already know my colors and words of objects, there is no surprise that I could utter two word utterances like "red ball". Why I could utter "red ball" and not "ball red", and how on earth I know that adjective comes before the nouns? Think about it. Let's put it this way, we children are smart beings with little bodies, and we could figure out the rules of speech through listening to adults. I am just one of the smarty hons that make my Mommy proud and amaze her whenever we spend quality time together...heeee....

All right in

Finally, I mastered my self-feeding skill, but it takes me a long long time, about 45 min, to get to half of the food. Most of the time, I don't finish my food, and when I told Mommy that I am done with my food, Mommy will repect my decision and let me down my mighty chair. Actually every time when I don't finish my food, Mommy will be worried that I will get hungry. However, Mommy tries not to force me to finish my food, and she wants me to learn the consequences of not finishing my food. When I get hungry later in the evening, Mommy will remind me that I don't finish my food during dinner time, and that's why I get hungry then. Mommy hopes that I will learn to finish my food as I learn about the consequences. I haven't learned about the consequences yet, but when the King says "All Done!", who dares to say "No!" ....haaa.....

Number in Action

Since I already know my numbers, Mommy wanted me to do the actual counting instead of doing Number Art on papers.

Counting makes sense when I see the connection of what I count with the numbers that I have learned. It's more fun to learn counting from daily objects than to count from drawings on paper.

My Sticker Books

Mommy has been searching for sticker books that can help me in my learning. Finally she found one that comes with a bag of 8 books that includes alphabets, colors, shapes, numbers, animals, sizes, words, and Mix & Match. These sticker books meets the objectives that Mommy wants me to achieve. To be able to recognize pictures and outlines from the sticker books, and using the picture stickers to stick them right on top of the correct outlines, which helps in my hand and eye coordination skills. I wasn't able to stick the caterpillar right on top of the outline of the carterpillar for my first trial, and Mommy reminded me to try sticking on the outline.

There is much improvement when I was trying to stick the sea star on the sea star's outline. Observe how I actually aware that I have pasted outside the outline and then took out the picture sticker and readjusted it to make sure I tried sticking on top of the outline. Though it's not exactly on the outline, but great improvement compared to sticking the caterpillar on my first trial.

Besides looking at the outline and recognise the picture stickers, and using my hand-eye coordination, there is another reason why Mommy just loves such sticker books. After sticking the stickers on the right place, there are names below each picture sticker,and in a way, it's not just blindly pasting the stickers but I also get to learn the words , which serves as a vocabulary book for me.

I am 19 months old!

I am a little man now at 19 months, and obviously, I have a mind of my own, and sometimes a very strong one. Mommy's worst nightmare is coming pretty soon. How Mommy wish I never learned the word "No", and always be a "Yes" Mommy's boy....haaa.... Whenever I say "No", it drives Mommy crazy! Most of the time, Mommy will try to respect my decision until I am ready, and she will ask again. Is there really a such thing as "Terrible Two"? Mommy wonders, but seems like it is approaching very soon. Will see.