10:55 pm - Me me and more me!

We went down to his childcare on Friday to buy his uniforms. My baby is going to be uniformed on 2 Oct! *sob* I can't believe it's been 18mths already.

I can't believe he's already gone from this...

to this already!

What a ride it has been. I've went from a sweet baby who was relatively easy to handle, to a squirmy rebellious loud headstrong toddler. I don't know if we've unknowingly "nurtured" this boy to be what he is today, or it's "nature". ...ok for those who know us, you don't have to comment. =p

His development thus far is quite normal, nothing remarkably genius-y nor remarkably worrisome. As with any other toddler, he performs better in some areas, and not so well in others. Needless to say, he prefers to dwell in areas he's better at...which kind of makes it hard for us to help him along in his weaker areas. We really had to learn to be creative to get him to be interested enough to learn.

Here's an example. He doesn't like to stack bricks, nor pop the right shape in the right hole. I was getting worried about his cognitive abilities, to identify shapes and recognise that there are differences between each shape. However, we swopped the medium from bricks to cars, and viola! ... he will match the correct car to the correct packaging it came from based on the picture on the box! *phew*

However, in many areas I'm starting to fall into the "leave it to the school" trap... His childcare will probably straighten his weaker areas out. He's not potty trained...the childcare will probably sort it out. Among a million other things. haha...at least we've managed to get him to self feed! My trick is to make the food really flavourful (ok the no salt no sugar no oil rule has been long thrown out the window), and make sure they are in large chunks. Somehow, Ignatius loves to scoop out large chunks of food. He's gone from loving RICE, to relegating it to the last thing to be eaten from his bowl.

So anyway, here are some pictures we took over the last month or so. We've been too busy coping with his "pushing boundaries" and "tantrums" to do much. Trying to be consistent in our limit settings, as well as synchronise ourselves to the same limits is more difficult than we thought. And this is before you include the grandparent factor. Sigh... but we have made some progress. I think. There are occasions whereby he actually OBEYS! Few...and far in between...but we're getting there.

The only academic progress we've made is that he can now count IF HE FEELS LIKE IT...to about 6. It's quite cute actually...he sticks out his fingers at random in imitation of us counting our fingers. I love to ask him to count and hear him go "wu-aan-neee". And he knows the first 3 letters of the alphabet thanks to the alphabet train that we've stuck onto the wall.

Enjoy!

Mommy can I have this?