05 November 2013

Updates (Calista)

 

It’s been a while since I last blogged..it’s hard to find the time and energy to do so these days, but the kids are growing up so quickly I feel wistful, and think I need to capture some of this down somehow.

For mothers, making time usually means forsaking sleep, and that is why I am up an hour earlier than usual.

Calista is now 2 years, almost-4 months. She surprises me with how long she has grown, how she speaks in complete (albeit slightly ungrammatical) sentences.

I called home from work yesterday, cos I called earlier to ask my mum something and heard her voice in the background asking “Is it DADdy???” (Typical daughter-father bias.)

When I called to speak with her, she told me “Mama I want you to read storybook to me…! This one..”

1) She thinks I can see the book she is holding, even though I am not there. Everything is still magical and possible to her.

2) Her mandarin active vocabulary is almost non-existent, other than “baobao” (carry). She speaks almost exclusively in English despite me trying my best to speak Mandarin to her.

My brother is so amused by Calista…her cries often disturb his sleep, and when he asked “Who cried earlier?” she would unashamedly do a “mock-cry” for him.

She is ending playgroup soon, and just attended orientation at her brother’s school, in preparation of going Nursery 1 next year. To think that when I first checked out Christian’s school, she was still comfortably ensconced in my tummy! Sigh.

She enjoyed school, and didn’t shed a tear…it appears that boys are usually the more clingy, crying sort when it comes to separation from familiar surroundings / caretakers.

Not much else has changed, except that her appetite increased, she’s grown taller, has longer hair, has larger eyes, and thus a less-prominent nose. Everybody says she looks like a female version of Christian, but I am not quite able to see it which is ironic given that I stare at them everyday, but maybe precisely cos that is the case.

She is exceedingly vain and has a healthy self-esteem. Loves to dress up and preen in front of the mirror, or show off to us. Made me laugh the other day when she pinched her nose, and moved her fingers to the sofa, saying “I put pretty there ok, you take care”.

Has a soft spot for soft toys and little animals. All I need to do to get her to be quiet is to pretend some soft toy is sleeping. She can usually be tricked into long cuddles by a whine or two from me :)

Her favourite song used to be “Happy Birthday” and I would love at how she valiantly tries to sing the third sentence “Happy BIRTH-day” which goes hiigh up, as if her voice was cracking. The song of the month seems to be the ABC song though. She can remember every bit although she mumbles her way through “LMNOP”.

She’s also into numbers now and can count properly (ie. point to one object at a time as she goes 1 – 2 – 3 –4 ). Can’t recognise the digits yet, but i am in no hurry to try since I know she’ll get there and there’s no point duplicating what the teachers will be teaching her anyway.

Sigh. She is the sweetest darling, who increasingly reminds me of myself when I was young, every day. We are so so glad she chose us to be her parents and decided to come into our lives.

  

1 comment:

  1. So much easier to just update Facebook, right? hhehe.

    ReplyDelete