Toddler-hood

Yes! XH is on his way to toddler-hood now. He is no longer the innocent and fragile baby who does nothing except crying, sleeping and drinking.... he has 'transformed' into a little explorer, little scientist, little adventurer, and a little food taster! He likes to lay his hands onto everything within his sight, experimenting it and sometimes taste it!

Wikipedia definition of Toddler is 'a young child who is learning to walk or "toddle", generally considered to be the second stage of development after infancy and occurring predominantly during the ages of 12 to 36 months (1 to 3 years) old.

Recently (during the past 1 month or so) we realised that he has learnt a lot of things by himself. We were very surprised at first when we found him bringing his own soiled diaper to the dustbin, bring his milk bottle to the kitchen and imitate us watering the plants when we give him a watering can, etc.... we had never purposely showed him or taught him all these - he just learnt them by himself while observing us....

We decided to bring this new skill to a higher level by telling him what he is doing each time he does something or when we are doing something in front of him, eg. keep, water the plants, wear your shoes, pick up the toys etc... and true enough it didn't take him long to understand these instructions and performing them - he gets really pleased and encouraged when we praise him / hug him after he completes each task - hee we can tell because he will show us this little "hao liao' look on his face..which is really really cute again of course :) >

The thought of that suddenly set our alarm bells ringing... that means - we have to constantly remind ourselves to do the right thing in front of him so as to set the right good example, which is a real difficult task especially if it involves a bad habit - There was once when I asked XH to help me keep my TV remote control and he diligently throws it onto the sofa - oopss that's because we always leave the remote control anywhere on the sofa....

Besides all the improvement on his motor and comprehensive skills, we had also noticed that his vocabulary has increased by quite a fair bit - he can now says quite a number of words associated with what he sees each day - like calling miki (my dog), saying rabbit, cat, gai-gai, mei-mei, jie-jie, baby although still not very clear with his pronunciation.

Toddler-hood is also a stage where parenting is most challenging (i think)...hmm..looks like mummy needs to do more research and spend more time with XH...