马年快乐！

May the year of the golden horse bring you and your family lots of love, laughter, blessings and bountiful blessings!!!

Letters to Julianne #31

Dearest Julianne, 

We're into the third week of the brand new year and I think you're only just settling down from all that fun you had in December and getting back to your usual routine.  With our holidays and Mama clearing leave, you pretty much had me around you throughout the holiday season and I think you got too comfortable with that.  Which may explain why you've been crying at drop-off on school days lately.  Tr M tells me you're otherwise OK once class starts so I'm guessing you've forgotten that going to school was part of your weekly routine - see what too much fun has done to you!

A little rough at drop-off but all smiles after

We're going to keep January easy after all the wave of activities one after another since November.  And with the Lunar New Year coming round, I think spending our weekends home working on some craft, visiting the playground and helping us spring-clean the house will the best idea! You also just recovered from a little flu bug that is making its rounds so home is best.  

You're ever as vocal, I come home to stories about your day spent with Por Por.  You will do your best at telling me anything exciting and out of the ordinary.  Like how Por Por's shoe broke when she walked you to school that day and she had to go to the provision store to get a slipper - "Mama, Por Por push Juju pram, go school.  Por Por shoe broken, go buy uncle".  Or when you got choked on your blueberries that night and ended up throwing up a little.  When Dada came home, you immediately related the story to him "Dada, Juju eat blueberry, choke, Ju urghh (to mean vomit)".    Your vocabulary continues to grow at an exponential rate, it's quite scary.  Some of the words you use, we don't even use it very often or consciously teach you.  Goes to show how fast you pick things up and the impact of our speech on you.  When you were fighting your fever, I was religiously rubbing peppermint essential oil on your soles every 30 minutes.  By the end of the first day, you were taking the bottle of oil to us and telling us "Mama peppermint time" and by the 2nd day, you could correctly pick up the peppermint oil from amongst my entire essential oil collection.  You are incredibly observant about where things in the house should be or where we may have placed our stuff, it's quite scary.  Por Por changed the carpet at the foot of our stairs.  When you came home, you immediately went "Eh, who buy this carpet?!" accompanied by a rather angry look if I may add.  As if we needed YOUR permission to change the carpet huh Little Miss I-AM-THE-BOSS.  Even Mama didn't realise Por Por changed the carpet.  I think you're really just very kaypoh.  

You have mastered your alphabets (or rather sing them) rather fluently.  You can count to 12 and know about 3 of the 7 days - Monday, Tuesday, Sunday.  Youre Chinese has improved a little and we have progressed from just 孔龙 to 香蕉 and 苹果. You're finding your way into the phonics department without us even getting you started on it. You can connect some alphabets with their sounds, specifically the letters, A, B, E, L, M, P.  I didn't know, until Yiyi Sam told me how you react whenever she shows you the alphabets on the bunting hanging in her room.  You'll go "le le le" when I show you the letter 'L', and "Per Per Per" when shown 'P'.  When I wrote the letter 'O', you went "circle" - everyone had a good laugh! 

You're showing interest in being toilet trained and by that I mean you can remove your own pull-up and tell me "Mama, I want to go potty", but when we bring you there, nothing comes out.  You'll then pull down the toilet paper, wipe and insist on flushing.  You just want to play right?  Well, it's a start, we'll get there in due course.  We're also trying to start the weaning process and started introducing a few ounces of soy formula milk to your bedtime milk.  We succeeded with about 20ml before you said "I don't want soy milk, I want mum nai-nai milk".  Then you cleverly plotted against my plans by falling sick, knowing that I will stop all the soy milk nonsense since you were not well.  OK, so your plan worked but sorry to tell you that we're going back to trying again tomorrow.  Don't tell to be too smart little missy.  

One more month to Disneyland!! Can you say EXCITED with me!! That look on your face the other day when I told you that you were going to have breakfast with Mickey Mouse and that Mickey was going to read you your bedtime story - priceless!! You looked at me with your eyes wide open, like you couldn't believe what I was saying.  Well, you'll know soon Mama isn't joking!! 

Your little bossiness add to your cuteness, smart-aleck kind of replies and sensitivities makes you that very special girl God made you to be.  Sweet with the right amounts of sassiness.   Love you so much Juju and don't let anyone ever ever tell you otherwise!! 

I'm cool.  Deal with it!

Love, 

Mama

Candid Camera

Was going through our Dropbox folder where the husband saves all his precious photos and saw some of the shots he took over the Christmas and New Year holidays .... Just the thing I need as I take a break from all the crazy work in the office.  Her smiles - they light up my day. 

A moment with Gong Gong

A kiss for Yiyi Sam

A poop at the convenience store? 

A peekaboo from under the blankkie

Endorsing Fanta drinks

Little White Riding Hood

Popsicle treat with her favourite Che Che

Pre Nursery Orientation

Happy New Year everyone!! Hope you're off to a great start to the New Year! 

Well someone sure is judging from how she took to her Pre-Nursery orientation at her new school.  

Even before Jules was of schooling age, we've pretty much made up our minds to send her to the church kindy once she turned 3.  Her short stint at the Montessori was just to prepare her better once she started Pre-N and also to get her to socialise and keep her better occupied than lazing around idling at home while I'm at work.  We never regretted sending her to Montessori cos it really did her good and I'll like to give the teachers credit for how far she's came in terms of her speech and motor skills development.  

In 2 months though, she'll leave the Montessori she has came to love to join new friends and teachers at Kindy.  We were at the orientation when school started two days ago and Jules looked seemingly excited at the prospect of new school and new friends.  She was eager to hold her her classmates hands and lead the rest of her class from the church sanctuary where the briefing was held, to her classroom.  She also quietly sat down on those little chairs in the classroom while the teacher briefed the parents and very spontaneously gave her Form Teacher a hug before we left.  I'm excited to see how she'll take to Kindy come March. 

I also felt very assured by God that morning as we attended the Orientation that this indeed was how He would like us to bring Jules up.  In a Christian school environment, amongst teachers who embraced the same faith as we did.  Not only did He assure me with 3 teachers from the school who are fellow members of our church, He also blessed Jules with the same teacher that taught the little sis 15 years ago.  With Jules entrusted into the hands of such an experienced Teacher who was really great with the kids from what I observed that morning, I left the school saying a little prayer of thanks. 

In the same morning though, we also informed the Montessori that she would be leaving the place in 2 months.  I felt really sad when I had to pass Teacher M the letter and (without sounding too drama) really had to hold back my tears - I'm really bad at this goodbye thing. In recent months, Jules has really taken to school, her friends and teachers.  As much as I know this is something we have to do, I feel really sad (and bad) for taking her out of Montessori.  I felt like I was taking away from her, something that she really looked forward to every day.   Something that she could call her own, that only she experienced in her own world, without Dada or Mama around her.  But we bid goodbye on a high note, I love the Montessori and God willing, if we ever have a second child, I'll be sure to send him/her back.  

Goodbyes means hellos to new adventures and we've two more months to prepare Jules for that.  Join us on our new kindy adventure then!!   

In her over-sized, already altered, project runway (as my sis says) uniform