Week 178 motherhood – LNY, washing dishes, refusing to stand, a chaperone,

Her first time visiting relatives for lunar new year celebrations

Week 178 motherhood with 3 year old and 13 month old:

February 8 to 14, 2024:

Two times this week, the 1 year old gifted me the chance to change two really dirty diapers in the morning lol. Grandma and DH were not home (DH was working at the office and grandma brought the 3 year old out with her to dim sum) (the second time was also when DH was working in the office and grandma had a doctor’s appointment), so I was tasked with the morning diaper duty. Usually DH is the one who changes her in the mornings. (I do my part with the 24/7 nursing and DH changes all the diapers for his part basically.)
The 3 year old has been drawing more this week. She has been drawing things that look like grids and maps. It’s quite interesting.
She continues to be hot and cold with her sister. When coming home from dim sum, she hugged her sister and wanted to hold her. Otherwise, she will continue to tell her not to grab her toys, don’t look at her, don’t touch at her, etc.
The 1 year old has also been drawing too. She has been holding pens, pencils, markers, chalk and copying her sister. The 1 year old can stand at the easel and draw with chalk on the chalkboard too!
The 1 year old enjoys leading me to the stairs and climbing them up to go to grandma’s room to play. I played with both kids in grandma’s bedroom often this week. I “made up” a game where I was holding the child and swinging her down and she would giggle and laugh because of the action. “Going on a roller coaster” is what I called it.
This week, the 3 year old’s jealousy went up another notch when she said she wanted to nurse on my breast…. lol… I did let her and she said, “Why isn’t there any milk coming out?” Well, my dear, it’s because you have to suck at the breast. It doesn’t just come out lol. She thought that it just comes out because her sister sucks at it but she actually does suction on it in order to bring the milk out. She tried and wasn’t successful. She then was playing around and “spat” on it. 🤦‍♀️ The 1 year old starts crying and fussing too when she sees her sister sitting on my lap because she wants to be nursed too.
During Zumbini this week, the 3 year old was good and actually danced this time. I was thinking perhaps we arrived early and she was accustomed to the surroundings that that’s why she felt comfortable to dance? I was glad not to carry her the entire time.
This past week was lunar new year and so we had a lot of family gatherings and dinners out. The 3 year old is not too scared of the loud uncle anymore. She was willing to sit and eat normally.
We brought out the Chinese new year outfits for the kids to wear. Last year, because the secondborn was basically a newborn, we didn’t even take photos together as a family with the outfits.
For lunar new year, we went to the Richmond Hill library for the Songs, Rhymes, Stories in Mandarin and Cantonese. It was just like last time. I love how enthusiastic the two facilitators were. It was really well done and well-prepared. They had Mandarin songs and Cantonese songs too. We had heard of the “dim sum” song in Cantonese last time before. The facilitator had made a lion head out of cardboard and the kids followed along the lion head to festive music too. It was so fun and great for the kids. The kids got a mandarin fruit and a red pocket too (with candy inside). Such a great start to our new year and of course with the EarlyON community too. So grateful for their programs and events!
We visited DH’s parents in the afternoon to “by leen” and both kids were fine and well-behaved. The 3 year old opened and ate an entire tangerine by herself and lots of cherries. Her bowel movements have been much more regular lately because of the increased number of citrus fruits and fruits in general. So glad.
The 1 year old loves holding my hand to lead me to different places. Or not just my hand but DH or grandma’s hand too.
The 3 year old is getting too big for the blue toddler tub… time to transition her into the actual tub itself although that also seems really big for her…
Glad to spend another lunar new year with my 103-year-old grandmother present. She’s sleepy and lethargic all the time now and doesn’t recognize me. I’m quite sure she doesn’t even know that I have my own kids now either.
The 1 year old saw dogs for the first time. My uncle brought his dogs out to play. The 1 year old was scared at first (not from the dogs but the new environment and the loud voices) that she nursed and was attached to me for a good ten minutes at minimum. When the dogs came out, she was fine with them and even pet one of them. I didn’t even see that her hand was on the dog’s head from my angle. DH saw though and took a picture of her petting the dog. I would have been more cautious because you never know how dogs will react to a baby.
The girls saw a lion dance for the first time at the Chinese dim sum restaurant we went to. It was really loud with the drums and we cupped the girls’ ears to protect them.
I hadn’t had dim sum in so long and it was so nice to eat some classic dim sum finally. We also saw the God of Fortune at the restaurant too.
When we were visiting our relatives, the 1 year old wasn’t afraid at all and was wandering and exploring her surroundings. She was playing with the candies and treats in the candy boxes and walking around.
The 3 year old’s best friend this week is still grandma. She likes to sit next to her at dinnertime and sleep in her bed and ask her to change her poopy diapers, etc.
At Creative Chefs this week, the kids made fruit and cheese kabobs and yogurt (fruit) tortilla wraps. The setup was beautiful and well-prepped by the staff.
At first, it was really awkward because they didn’t know the door had closed by itself and locked itself too. When we arrived (we were the first ones there), the door was locked. It was a first for me to arrive at an EarlyON centre and the door locked. I ended up asking the elementary school office about it but naturally the receptionist said they didn’t have anything to do with the program and advised me to try knocking on the door. When we went back to the classroom, it was right at that moment that the facilitators were wondering where everyone was too and opened the door. I exclaimed to them that we were there 3 minutes ago but that the door was locked. They didn’t even apologize or explain that they were in the room the whole time. It was really awkward actually. But then later on, I understood that the door locked by itself upon closing, so it wasn’t malicious or intentional. It was just unlucky we were the first ones there to encounter such a thing.
The 3 year old was really into the fruit cutting, skewering, and eating. She did basically everything herself this time. She used the tongs herself too to pick up the fruit! Such an improvement. She cut up the strawberries and cheese by herself, skewered them one by one on the long skewer stick. I showed her how to make the watermelon heart with the cookie cutter and she was able to put the watermelon hearts on the skewer too. I sliced away the skin of the apple for her because she doesn’t like to eat apple skin and she sat there snacking on the apples before starting on the skewer. She finished the entire thing.
She then scooped the yogurt on to the tortilla wrap and folded it herself too to eat. She must have been really hungry because she ate everything she made. The only thing left was the banana which she saved for home because she wanted DH to eat it lol.
The best part about this Creative Chefs class was that the kids were able to wash the dishes themselves! I was talking to the Twinkle Toes facilitator about this and how the class in January had the kids washing their dishes and how great it was. I’m pretty sure that it was after my conversation with her that she told this site to implement the dish washing here too.
The 3 year old spent the entirety of the 2-hour program making and eating the food. She had 15 minutes left to wash her dishes. All the other kids and adults were packing up and leaving already. She enjoyed the dish washing and told me she wanted to help me wash dishes at home at night lol.
The 3 year old has come a long way from her very first Creative Chefs class where they also made fruit kabobs (but everything was already cut for them) to now where she’s doing everything herself. Bravo.
We did squeeze in one book to read before we left. Her memory is amazing. She recalled that we read a “baby” book last time. I couldn’t remember what it was and didn’t know what it was. She scoured the bookshelf and was actually able to find it! How did she remember the spine of the book amongst all the other books?! Interestingly enough, she found the French version of it. Thus, I wasn’t able to read it to her but we went through the book anyway and I described it in Cantonese to her. She questioned why it was in French though. Still can’t believe how precise her memory is sometimes. It’s amazing.
This week, the 3 year old has been enjoying feeding her sister. She feeds her individual raisins and bits of egg rolls and yogurt too. Such a good girl.
At the second class of Twinkle Toes this week, the 3 year old didn’t want to participate at all (as in she didn’t want to stand on her own too feet). Sigh. It was really awkward because we were the only family there for the first 20 minutes. I don’t know why the facilitator didn’t wait another 10 minutes for more families to show up before we started. It wasn’t like we didn’t have time. We finished at 2:40 p.m. and the program was still open until 3:30 p.m. They should have let us read and play until another family came so that we could all sing and start together then. I think maybe the 3 year old didn’t want to stand by herself was because she felt like she was in the spotlight. There were literally two facilitators, me and grandma, and then her and her sister. It was like a private class, but this child doesn’t like attention on her.
(So I am observing patterns where if we arrived late to Zumbini and there were a lot of people in the room, she didn’t feel comfortable and didn’t want to stand by herself. But this time, there was nobody else but us with the facilitators and yet she still didn’t want to stand by herself. So the sweet spot is to arrive early but have others there too — so we’re not the only ones there.)
Anyway, it was a good class because we used different props to sing and dance with the songs. We used drums, bells, silk scarves, small umbrellas, bubbles. The small umbrellas really captivated the 3 year old and this was the point where she was okay with standing by herself and playing with it. I like how one of the facilitator noticed this and did a second song. I did not appreciate how the second facilitator asked me how old my daughter was in front of everyone when she saw her clinging on to me. Um, why does her age matter? I told her the age and followed it up with that she’s “having one of her days” and looked to the other facilitator who was here last week that “she was fine last week”, but I really shouldn’t have had to explain that. A child can be acting up or needy at any age, whether she’s 1 or 2 or 3 or 4. Why did her age matter? Ugh. It’s not like knowing her age would be able to help her adjust or want to participate at that moment. “She just didn’t want to” is a valid reason as any.
We have two more classes. I definitely hope the 3 year old will cooperate next time. When she was waiting for me in the bathroom while I was showering (as she likes to do these days), she later told me that she didn’t want to participate because she was hungry. Oh, man… I told her that she should have told me that and we could have eaten a snack first. So that’s why she didn’t want to stand by herself? We’ll have to make sure she eats something really filling next time. But her metabolism is also really fast. She sometimes eats like a bottomless pit and sometimes can go for hours without eating, so who knows…
We had a Valentine’s Day dinner booked for just the two of us and unfortunately as we were about to leave the house, the 3 year old asked us where we were going and started crying and saying she wanted to go too. We weren’t able to persuade her to stay at home with grandma and her sister at all for like 10+ minutes. It was so tough. We ended up bringing her to a chic Italian restaurant. Sigh. No date night for mommy and daddy. We had a chaperone lol. Still better than dining out with both kids, but not the night we expected. I wasn’t bitter about it or anything. It’s her age right now to want to be with her parents and we’ll look back at this and cherish the time we had with her. When she grows up, she won’t want to dine with us like this. And because of her with us, we were able to order one more dish than we would have. More food, yay!
We visited another new EarlyON location to scope it out (because it’s near my SIL’s and I want to see if it’s suitable to bring her and her kids). I’m so glad I checked it out first because the parking situation was not so straight-forward. But now that I’ve been there, I know it’s doable with some instruction and it’s another spot I can bring her to.
I love the facilitator there and how warm and understanding she was. I know and have seen her at other locations before but this was the first time she “hosted” the session all by herself, so I got to see how she interacted with the kids and hosted circle time. I love that she did the full 30 minutes of circle time with active singing, book reading, dancing. It was really great. It makes me think of how the centres that do just 15 minutes of circle time at the end are just lazy…
We had an “open year” dinner with DH’s family. Both kids behaved as well as they could have considering it was a long dinner — we were there for 2.5 hours. Both kids played with the Water Wow colouring books and the popits. The 3 year old found my pen in my backpack and we gave her a sheet to draw with. She drew another map-like thing. She was then playing with the Rubik’s cube and she actually matched all colours on the 2-by-2 cube! Wow, even I can’t do that. She later matched two more colours on 2 sides. Wow, is it a fluke or does she really know how to play? So cool.