Tuesday, September 16, 2008

XX The Curious

I'm not lying when I say "I can't take my eyes off XX". The boy turned 21 months 3 days ago but seemed to have entered into the 'Terrible Twos' phase prematurely. He's extremely curious, increasingly expressive and has developed an opinion. Make no mistake, I'm pretty proud of his progress and many of his antics have brought smiles to our faces. But it does gets on your nerves sometimes, especially if you are at the same time trying to debate with the 6-year old brother why too much computer is bad for the eyes AND make dinner.

Over the past weeks, on mulitple occasions, I've turned my back on him for seconds, only to turn back and see him up to some mischiefs. He had either pulled out 60 pieces of tissue from the box (yes, I'd counted as I patiently fold them back) or unrolled the whole roll of toilet paper from the holder, while sitting on the toilet bowl. He had also dropped his toy cars into the potty and his lunch - on purpose - just to see his mother's reaction. He'd tapped on my laptop's keyboard repeatedly until it hanged and plucked out the "{ [" key. And most recently, I caught him blowing on the recorder. Which was sweet, until I see his saliva flowing out from the other end - onto the keyboard of my laptop!!

XX loves cars. His favourite bib is one that has a car print on it. His second favourite is the one with a truck print. When he sees it hanging on the rack, he'll pull it out and come to you, asking you to change to this bib - when it's still wet!

XX and his favourite 'car' bib

Yesterday, I took a pair of socks and made the mistake of saying, "Mummy wear this for you, ok?" He said, "No." Then he chose another pair that he'll allow me to put on. When we go shopping, he'll look at things and make expressions like "wow!" if he sees something he likes. When he sees me wearing a new pyjamas with floral prints, he pointed at the flowers and said approvingly: 'nice'. After getting off from the toilet seat, he likes to take a look at his own messy poop, and he'll say "whoa".

In supermarkets, XX will always insist on pushing the trolley, even when I want to stop and browse. I've learnt the art of grabbing what I want as the trolley moves past and got to be very careful not to leave the trolley alone because he'll continue to push it forward and ram into something or someone. And I must be alert when the trolley suddenly stops moving too. This means he's distracted by something else and is probably touching it. I've had a few heart stopping moments when I just managed to stop him from lifting a couple of glass jars from the shelves. There have been occasions when I wanted to move on and he wants to stay. He actually squatted down and later laid on the floor, refusing to budge. Just like those spoilt brats we see, I'm embarrassed to say. He's also very good at making his displeasure known. When he's upset, he'll say 'No' to everything you say. Recently, he'll vent his frustrations by throwing punches or throwing things. I'm not sure if he'd learnt it or is it an instinctive reaction since he can't verbalise his feelings. But we're trying to teach him that he can't throw things and hit people when he's angry. He's pretty afraid of the cane though. He knows he can get it if he's naughty. Once I asked him 'who's naughty?' with the cane in my hand, he pointed to his brother immediately and said 'gor gor' (and sometimes 'papa').

Foodwise, I'm getting mixed signals from him about what he likes. Somedays he'll take noodles but the next day, he'll spit it out. Same for bread, except his favourite strawberry jam sandwich. I mentioned he took burgers before, but recently, the same burgers have failed to be accepted. Pizza too, depends on his mood. Strange, he can chew on very hard stuff like pizza crust but spits out when he bites on a beansprout in his noodles. So I'm still cooking porridge for him on alternate days. At least he doesn't spit it out (not yet) and I can make him finish it. On the other days, I try to introduce him to what we eat so he can at least develop his chewing skills.

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