Suzette's Parenting and Breastfeeding Blog

One weekend, DH suddenly had the mood to make something fun for the kids. He took out a cardboard and transformed it into 2 masks: Ultraman for Ian and Doraemon for Isabel.

Ian so funny, he put the Ultraman mask onto his best friend Babun’s face:

And after seeing Ian did that, Isabel also followed and put her Doraemon mask onto her Julia’s face:

Hahahaha! My kids really had a great fun with their homemade masks. BTW, did you notice that Ian carefully placed the eye-holes on Babun’s face, so that his ‘best friend’ could ’see’ also?

Lately, Isabel is getting more and more difficult. I think the terrible 2 is here…

This happened just a few weeks ago, when DH was in HK for business meeting…

First, when I gave her a cup of water, she took a very long time to drink. When I turned around, entered the kitchen, she poured the whole cup of water onto the marble floor!

I was so furious and was also thankful that it was just plain water (can you imagine if it was milk or juice?).

I put her down on the floor, gave her a piece of cloth and insisted that she wiped them. Initially she didn’t follow my instruction. She stood there cried, forcing herself to vomit. Nothing came out coz she hasn’t had her lunch yet. She continued crying, and I continued to ignore her. After a while, she came to me, asking me to help her wipe the floor. Finally she wiped the floor.

And then, during dinner time, I gave her a bowl of macaroni, which she enjoyed eating for a while. Then, I went into the kitchen to prepare some fruit smoothies for them, she poured the macaroni onto the marble floor AGAIN!

I was furious, and did the same thing again: put her on the floor, gave her a bowl, and insisted that she clean the floor by picking up all the macaroni into the bowl. She cried and refused at first. After ignoring her for a while, she started picking them up finally.

You see, if I clean up for her, or let the maid clean up, she would never know what trouble she put on others. Only when she cleans it up herself, she would know it is not something others like. Hopefully she learnt her lesson and won’t repeat this in the future!

I have been looking for ideas to child-proof our windows but scratched our heads couldn’t find a solution. Wonder if any of you have experience in this?

Our windows are push-out type, with metal frames. I have been searching everywhere, found a lot of useful solutions BUT not for our window type. The USA has a lot of safety gadgets, but because they mostly use ‘double hung’ windows, i.e. sliding upwards, so all useless to ours.

Saw from a forum, someone suggested using the deat-bolt chains (like our doors), which I think is super brilliant. Later, realized that our window frames are metal, so cannot screw the chains in. Another disappointment.

I don’t want to install permanent fixture, because worry of emergency cases like fire escape route can be blocked. Any ideas or experience would be very much appreciated!

Isabel is somewhat slower than Ian in picking up songs, but that doesn’t she didn’t pay attention to songs! She has surprised us recently…

Out of sudden, she has been singing a LOT of songs by herself, though sometimes out of tune and lyrics. She has been singing all sorts of English and Chinese songs. I have been assuming she picked those up in MIL’s house (thought she let her watch the VCDs). Then, last week found out that MIL assumed the same - she thought I have been singing those songs to Isabel!

Her favourite song is Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star, which she calls it Blinking-Blinking Song. What a ‘nice’ name she gave it. LOL!

Look, she has been singing songs that we don’t sing often and or hear/plan often - perhaps once a few months ago? I think she has elephant memory - recorded them first, and now only playing out by singing out loud. Hahahaha!

There are plenty of articles about how to deal with siblings jealousy like here and here.

One says it very well:

“The following imaginary scenario might help you to see things from the older child’s perspective. (It is written from the perspective of a wife, but it could easily be a husband or other partner.)

Imagine that your husband comes home one day with another woman. He announces: “Dear, I love you as much as I always have, but now this person is going to live with us, too. By the way, she is also going to take up a lot of my time and attention because I’m crazy about her. She is more helpless and needy than you are anyway. Isn’t that wonderful? Aren’t you delighted?”

How would you feel about that new woman in your family?”

(source: Dr. Spock)

Anyway, this is not about the how to cure, or how to reduce, or how to cope. This post is about how jealous my 2 children are with each other. Yes, not just the older child gets jealous, the younger one as well!

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