How fast time flies, yet how slowly it crawls. Is that an oxymoron or not?

Anyway, it really is difficult to think that a month has passed since we returned home from the hospital with Angelina in our arms, on the day that Antonio turned two years old.

Today, the boy is 25 months old. He has achieved much, considering the limited supervision that he receives from his parents.

> He is toilet trained.
We started seriously toilet training him in the week beginning April 12. Of course the first few days were filled with loads of spills (pun intended). However, within a week, he was able to tell us that he wanted to pee, and a couple of days after, he went to the toilet by himself if he needed to relieve himself. Just this past week, he managed to get on to the toilet seat and moved his bowels – skipping the potty and training seat.

> He can count from one to ten.
But in three languages: English, Italian, and Spanish. The Spanish and English parts developed largely from watching Dora the Explorer. Now, he can count from one to five in Mandarin.

> He likes to count how many objects there are.
Having grasped the basic concept of counting, he grabs any opportunity to count stuff. They can be images of flowers in a drawing, the number of glass beakers on the table, or the steps on the staircase at home that the he climbs every day.

> He can identify alphabets.
This skill we credit to Word World, which he started viewing since last December. We only realised it after grandma Lillian gave him an alphabet set earlier this month, and he started stating the alphabet as he picked each one up.

At the moment, we are also at a loss on how we can continue to stimulate his brain in terms of learning. Only because we have run our of ideas, and are preoccupied with the presence of Angelina while clearing work. if any parents out there have ideas, please let us know!

 
Unlike the mini party we organised for his first birthday, Antonio’s second birthday was a much quieter affair.

For starters, mommy and daddy were not home until about 4pm in the afternoon, and we came home with a baby sister! She had chosen to arrive on April 17, which meant we spent two nights at the hospital.

Due to this, we did not have time to organise any celebration or buy a birthday cake. What we did was, on our way home from the hospital, we bought a blueberry muffin as a stand-in cake. Daddy decided to throw in some balloons, because Antonio loves playing with balloons, and candles to place on the muffin.

Our boy obviously did not understand that it was his second birthday, but he experienced a range of emotions:
- surprise and awe, which he expressed through exclaiming “Baby!” when he first saw Angelina;
- longing and happiness, which he expressed through tears and fierce hugs with mommy whom he suddenly realised was home after not being around for two nights and almost three days;
- glee, which he expressed through his own child-talk when he received the balloons, blueberry muffin and another toy for his birthday.

We have taken photographs, which will be posted soon so you can share in his experience of his second birthday.

 
After writing this post on Tuesday evening, Antonio did something absolutely amazing.

I was relating to Roberto how Antonio entertained me, as written in the post, as the little boy sat and watched Dora the Explorer. For the fun of it, papa asked his son: “Antonio, what sound does a monkey make?”

Without missing a beat, Antonio replied: “Ahh! Ahh!”

Loud, clear and confident. He even added in two shoulder shrugs as he said it.

Both Roberto and I were so surprised, we burst out laughing! This was the first time anyone had asked Antonio what sound a monkey makes, and we were not sure if he know. Apparently, he must have picked it up from the monkey named Boots in all the Dora episodes.

Yesterday morning, I tried something new. I told Antonio: “What sound does a donkey make? A donkey goes ‘hee haw’, ‘hee haw’.” And he repeated, “Hee haw! Hee haw!”

This morning, he woke around 6.30am and called for me from his room. After I entered, I offered my hands in the gesture of carrying him up. Instead, he used both his hands to hold my hand, and placed them on the bed before stating very clearly, “Sit down.”

Despite my sleepiness, I recognised that this is the first time that he was making the request verbally, when before he would just use his hand to pat the space next to him as an indication that he wanted me to sit there.

Later in the morning, after I had adjusted the volume for a programme he was watching, he patted the spot next to where he was sitting and said, “Sit down.”

The boy sure knows what he wants!

 
The title sums up the new concepts that Antonio has picked up!

Papa has been counting in Italian when he dries Antonio’s toes, and after just three weeks, the toddler can clearly repeat certain numbers after papa, in particular due (two), cinque (five) and ocho (nine). As for the other numbers, he still trying to enunciate them well and he grabs every chance that he has to do so.

Yesterday evening, Antonio demonstrated that he understood the concept of colours. He was playing with some blue Sprite bottle caps and red Coca Cola bottle caps that the eatery owner passed to him in a plastic bag. He held a mixture of both colour bottle caps in his hands and made the action to give them all to me.

I stretched out my left hand and said, “Antonio, mommy only wants the red colour ones. Can you give me the red caps?” I was not sure if he understood what I wanted, so I repeated, “Give mommy the red colour caps.”

He looked at the caps, then started to separate the caps. Very quickly, he placed two red caps on my palm, returned to searching again among the caps in his hands, then placed another red cap on my palm.

What a surprise!

After this, he placed the blue caps on the floor then searched inside the plastic bag for more caps. He drew out the rest of the red caps and gave them to me. Then he looked through the remainder caps to make sure that there were no red caps left.

As this is the first time this has happened, I have no idea whether it was a lucky guess on Antonio’s part or that he really understood the difference between the colours.

Then while we walked back home, I tried to keep him occupied by asking him: “What sound does a dog make?” He answered, “Wow wow wow.”

“What sound does a duck make?”
“Kak kak kak”

“What sound does a lion make?”
“Rwar!”

“What sound does a cat make?”
“Meow”

“What sound does a cow make?”
“Moo!”

“What sound does a sheep make?”
“Baa!”

“What sound does a horse make?”
“Negh”

Now I wonder whether I was the one who entertained him or the other way around…

 
Yesterday marked the beginning of Antonio’s last month as an ‘infant’ (as defined by the airlines for flying without the need of a separate seat). Our ‘baby’ is now 23 months old, and we are slowing looking at him as a young boy now.

Both his physical and speech development have been moving at an amazing speed over the past month. Blink, and you will miss it.

On Thursday night, after his shower, he initially refused to put on any clothes. So I decided to play one of the Dora DVDs first, then attempt dressing him again. I turned away for less than five minutes to get everything done, then when I turned back to look at Antonio, he was standing up on the mattress and pulling up his shorts!

The little one managed to get both legs in to one leg of his shorts and then pull the waist band up to his waist. What an achievement! I praised him before telling him that he had to have one limb in each leg of the shorts. So I helped to wear the shorts again.

On Friday, he attempted to say some new words such as “please” and “sorry”.

This last month before he turns two years old will also be quite a challenging time for everyone in the house, as we are preparing for the arrival of his younger sibling. Hopefully everything will work out smoothly, and Antonio will shower his younger sister with love, like he showers momma and papa with love now.

Mommy, the growing belly and Antonio

 
New ability/skill for the week: opening doors that have an up-down handle.

We do not know whether we should be happy or worried. Now that Antonio is sufficiently tall enough to reach the door handle, he is able to pull the door handle down and cause the door to open.

The first door that he successfully opened on his own was the front door of the house, only because the handle rotates easily.

The second door he conquered was that of his room. So skillful is he that one night upon waking from his sleep and so desperate was he for mommy that he could not wait for me to reach his room, he climbed out of bed, opened his room door and ran straight in to our room (we sleep with the door open so that it is easy for either one of us to check in on Antonio). Oh boy…

That is all at the moment, as the handles on our bedroom door and those that lead to the terraces are stiffer and slightly more difficult to pull down.

We wonder what comes next for his physical development.

 
It has been quite an amazing week, in terms of Antonio’s development. He has hardly mastered a new word, when he is on to the next!

Two nights ago, he was repeating “puppy” and pointed out “baby”.

Last night, it was “drum”, “backpack” and “map”. The first was after watching an episode of Word World, where Dog beat out the rhythm on a drum. He then took an empty bucket (a KFC one that contained nine pieces of chicken), turned it upside down, and started to drum his hands on the base as he said something that sounded like “drum”.

The other two words were again from watching Dora the Explorer. Also, while watching Dora go through an episode of Rhymes and Riddles, he repeated “dub dub dub” after a section on a rhyme that goes “rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub, rub-a-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub-dub”, complete with rubbing his hands together.

This morning, as we watched a programme on wild animals, I pointed out “gorilla” to him. As I am also beginning to name items in Mandarin, I followed up with “xing xing”, the Mandarin word for gorilla. The boy immediately tried to repeat it and ended up with something that sounded like “sin sin”. I suppose “sin sin” is easier to say than gorilla! Now whenever I point out a gorilla, he says “sin sin”.

After he became bored with the programme, he picked up a picture book of Merlin the wizard and opened it. He saw a picture of an owl, pointed to it and said “bird”. Immediately, I said, “This is a bird called an owl. Ow-el.”

Guess what? He tried to repeat it after me! He tried a few times, then decided that the owl was no longer interesting, and went on to voicing out the familiar items that he saw in the book: bird, dog, cookie.

Earlier this evening, as we were flipping through another picture book and I was pointing out all the pictures, he finally said “boat”. This was the first time he tried to repeat the word “boat” after me, and he made an effort to do so.

Then while he was in the shower earlier, after I had placed liquid soap on his hands, he rubbed them together as he said “dub dub dub”.

As I type this, he is watching Dora the Explorer as she goes through an episode of Musical School Days. He just repeated “ola” after one of the characters.

Now I just need to teach him one of my favourite phrases, “cool bananas!” and he is set to start rattling off full sentences.

 
It is slightly past midnight as I write this, and what I want to recount happened earlier in the night, on Wednesday March 10.

While waiting for bath time to arrive – it is set at around 8pm – I decided to engage Antonio in a spot of “reading”. This means opening a book, pointing at objects and naming them. We went through his usual favourites: train (he says “choo-choo”), duck, frog (almost getting it!), bird, fish, cat (he says “miao”), dog (he says “wow wow”).

Then I decided to introduce new words: key, kitten and puppy. The boy surprised me by saying “puppy” exactly the way it is supposed to be pronounced. Just to confirm that I was not mistaken, I repeated the word, and he said it back to me, “puppy”. Yeah, a new word for the day!

After his bath, which has recently turned in to a shower, it is usually time to watch an hour of Dora the Explorer. Tonight’s selection include an episode of big sister Dora bringing a jack-in-the-box to her twin baby brother and sister.

When the twin babies appeared on screen, Antonio pointed to them and said “baby”.

Ever since we discovered that I am pregnant again, I have constantly told Antonio that he is going to have a younger sister, and that she is now growing in mommy’s belly. Then I will pat my belly and say “baby”. Sometimes he will repeat the action and say “baby”, but we had no idea if he understood what it all meant.

What he did earlier in the night demonstrated that he knew exactly what was happening. I am so amazed at his strong association abilities.

Perhaps I should not be this surprised as two days before, Antonio displayed a strong sense of object association as he was being dressed for his morning walk.

He had initially thrown a mini protest at having to put on socks but I told him: “If you want to go for your walk, you have to wear your shoes. If you want to wear your shoes, you have to wear your socks first. If you do not wear your socks, you cannot wear your shoes and you cannot go for your walk.”

He immediately sat down and allowed his socks to be worn, before heading downstairs and straight to his shoes sitting by the door.

I continue to be aware of his daily developments, as this is the stage where it is rapid growth time!

 
That was the exact statement that Antonio was trying to express earlier, when he was being dressed for a short afternoon outing.

I had picked a bright yellow t-shirt without collar so that he would stay comfortable in the mid-afternoon heat, even though the nanny was going to carry him under the shade of an umbrella.

However, the little one insisted on picking out a top by himself, and chose one with a collar. When I tried to exchange this one with the yellow t-shirt, he protested by pushing the latter away. Then he thrust the collar t-shirt in my face, waved it up and down and insisted that I help him to wear it.

Needless to say, the little tyke got his wish and he was so pleased with his selection that he voluntarily gave mommy a hug after he was fully dressed.

Talk about asserting his independence!

 
Fifteen minutes ago, I was interrupted from my work by Antonio who very deftly and swiftly grabbed a desktop calendar that I had on the work desk. He is particularly drawn by this desktop calendar as it features all the colourful characters from Sesame Street.

As he flipped through the pages of the calendar, I started pointing out objects and shapes while naming them: heart, star, cookie, book, pencil.

He surprised me by repeating whatever words that he could.

For instance, I used my finger to trace the shape of a heart as I said “heart”, and he repeated “heart”, which a new word for him.

Then when I pointed to the star, I began singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a song that we taught him when he was slightly over a year old, together with hand actions of closing and opening his fingers.

The first time I sang the song, he watched and listened. After I stopped singing, he pointed again at the star, then placed the calendar down and started doing the hand action while looking expectantly at me. So I started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star again, with hand actions thrown in.

Antonio surprised me by chiming in at “star”, then attempting to continue singing on “how I wonder”. Then after I sang “up above the world so high”, he repeated the word “up”, before he chimed in again at “star” when the line “twinkle twinkle little star” was repeated. Plus, he did all this with his hand actions.

A pity I did not have a video recorder nearby. It would have been something to rewind and view repeatedly.