Goodbye Playgroup

Tomorrow is Noah's last day in Playgroup (the school is closed on the 29th and 30th). I don't know how much of an impact this will have on his daily life and therefore have not really discussed it with him. The kids should be the same and the teachers may remain the same. It is crazy to think that he will not even be in the youngest class anymore. Goodbye baby Noah. Goodbye Playgroup. Hello big boy Noah and Nursery 1.

He POOOOOPED!

Noah pooped in the toilet! Just before Noah's shower, Seth flippantly told Noah to go do a caca in the potty. Noah asked for the big toilet and to our surprise (he had not even said he needed to poop), he pooped! Now he says he is no longer scared to poop in the potty. YAY!

Holiday Cheer

It's the holidays!  Valerie found an old potato lying around, and presto-change-o, we have some neat new stamps to play with.     

Later, Elias (Noah's school friend) and his parents came over for a Christmas/Hannukah afternoon celebration.  First off for an afternoon of fun: cookie making.  Last time we made cookies, we tried the typical old-fashioned sugar cookie; the European contingent declared this much too sweet.  This time, we used a French "sable" recipe... much better.

Then, we decorated the cookies:

                                               

And here are the boys proudly showing off their handiwork.... and patiently, patiently waiting to eat the cookies as soon as we turn our backs:

"Good job, Elias.  High-five!"

After the cookies, we moved on to chocolate... The game of "dreidel" seemed appealing at first...

However, after a few turns, and a few attempts to spin the dreidel, they started asking about when they could eat the chocolate.  As soon as they learned that they couldn't eat the chocolate until the game was over, they rapidly decided that the game should be over as soon as possible.

There was then a brief interlude making macaroni necklaces...

And then the two boys returned to the most popular toy of the day: the toy cars.

The toy cars are so exciting, and there are only 14 or 15 of them, so sharing was a bit difficult.  However, any and all disputes were happily resolved with a hug:

After a little dinner, it was time for Elias and his parents to go home.

Happy holidays!

School Life

With the school year coming to an end, Noah received his first yearbook:

Here's his class photo:

There's Nojus, Noah, Kathryn, Riko, Elias (Noah's good friend), Gavin, Rachel (with Sam behind her), Kfir, Lian, and Jing Shuen.  The teachers are Jia Hui, Isabelle, Liza, Siew Ling, and Rebecca. Little Amy was absent that day as was Esmee, Noah's best friend according to him.

As all good yearbooks do, it summarizes Noah's main activities during the year.  Here is Noah playing with letters, tracing them with his fingers and learning the sounds:

And here is Noah playing with numbers and working on his math skills, matching the "number rods" to the numbers, and organizing the "red rods" from largest to smallest:

They also learned about plants and animals, dressing up as a leopard and watering the bushes. According to his progress report, he knows his living animals well, but needs some work recognizing his extinct animals!

His favorite activity, perhaps, is painting, drawing, and making collages:

Another of Noah's favorite activities is playing outside in the water...

... and in the gravel pit with his friends.

                                   

Then, there are all the celebrations, like "Children's Day" and Deepavali.  And of course all the many birthday parties that absolutely must be celebrated with cake and cookies.

Overall, I think Noah has had a pretty good year in "school."

Noah Graduates from Playgroup!

Noah's nursery school runs on a calendar year basis, so as of January first, he will officially move from "Playgroup A" to "Nursery 1."  Big steps for a little boy!  Next thing you know, he'll be off to college....

We met with his teachers last week for an end-of-the-year wrap-up, where of course he received the expected glowing reviews.  

How could you not give rave reviews to a boy with a smile like that:

                                        

They carefully evaluated all the new, important skills he learned this year.

One week, every night at dinner, he was obsessed with folding napkins.  Well now we know: that week, he mastered skill 5.1!  And that week he was obsessed with the zipper on his jeans... skill 8.1!  I wonder what is on next year's skill list?

They also evaluated his social and emotional development:

He has the makings of a born leader!  Hurry, I hear there is a presidential election coming up in the US next year!  Is it too late for him to enter?

He has gained some impressive leadership experience this year: his teachers report that he has taken charge of two important "Playgroup A" committees: the "New Student Welcome Committee" (NSWC) and the "Playgroup Potty Committee" (P-PC)  In his role on the NSWC, he mentors and advises new entrants to the playgroup, banishing their tears with his big smile.  The P-PC, too, has an important job in the Playgroup organization.  Noah leads by example, demonstrating his talents peeing on the potty, encouraging others to experiment with this innovative new technology, the toilet.

Overall, it's been a good year!

Potty Update

In our last potty-related post (because-i-want-to-do-pipi-in-big-toilet ), Noah refused to pee at school because he wanted to do pipi in the big toilet. This lasted for a few days. He then agreed to pee during school hours but only at the big toilet just outside of school, then in the school bathroom but only with his favorite teachers! Otherwise, he is and has been for quite a while now completely potty-trained when it comes to daytime peeing (including nap time).

We are still fighting the poop war though. He asks for his diaper every time he needs to poop. We try to get him to attempt to do the deed in his potty. At first he would refuse to even try, then he would sit on it but not really try and now he sometimes makes a sincere effort to try but so far to no avail - even though we bribed him with five immediate stars and thus a little present and even a piece of chocolate. So poop goes in the diaper for now. I would rather he poop regularly and in the diaper than not at all which is what happens when we don't give him the diaper during the critical period. If anybody has some advice on poop matters, please comment. To be continued...

Happy Birthday Suza

Ever since a few months before his second birthday, Noah has been really into birthdays, his own upcoming birthday at first but also friends and family birthdays. He keeps a mental list of whose birthday is next. For weeks now, he has been talking about how his Aunt Suza's birthday is coming up and how he was going to make her a collage (he loves making collages and saying the word collage).

A message from Noah to his Aunt (in English and what he tells us is Chinese).

 Happy birthday Suza!

Noah's First Facebook Update

This morning I caught Noah playing with my iPhone. After rescuing my phone, I promptly forgot about the incident. A few hours later, I checked facebook and saw that "I" had posted a new status about three hours earlier. "Muezh" read my status. Really??? Noah took my phone, got to the facebook page, pressed status, wrote his update and then pressed share. Was he very lucky or are the iPhone and Facebook app so intuitive that even a 2 year old can update my status? Did he ever see me update my status? I don't do so often but I guess it is possible. We will just have to see if he can reproduce this feat!

Lots of Letters

Noah's relationship to letters started when he was very young. Seth could not think of songs to sing to soothe a newborn Noah so he would sing him the alphabet and then the alphabet backwards. During his first year, Noah heard the ABC and ZYX in English and French without much of a reaction. 

As our old twitter followers might remember, when we moved to Singapore around Noah's first birthday, we got Noah some cute alphabet stickers.

I paired each letter with a sign and a sound A for "abeille" bzzzzzz, B for "bebe" (baby) ouin ouin, C for "chat" (cat), miaou miaou and so on. Noah quickly developed his favorites: B, D (for Dada), K ("kangaroo"), L ("lion"), V ("violon" or violin), W ("walabi"), X ("xylophone"), and Y ("yayi").  A side note on Yayi, which is a sound Noah invented for the "Y" - it also happened to be the name I called myself when I was little; "Yayi" became a nickname for me for a while. Such a strange coincidence. Back to the letters - Noah started pointing at the ones he liked best so I would make the sign and especially the noises he liked to hear. 

When Noah was 13.5 months, he recognized his first letter out of the blue. He took out a random letter from his foam cube and signed "fleur, fleur" (flower) and sure enough - it was an F (we repeated the experiment later on by taking out an F and asking him what it was).  

By 16.5 months, he knew all the capital letters and would excitedly identify letters everywhere. We would be walking in the street and he would sign "flower, flower", "kangaroo, kangaroo" or "violin, violin." I would look around trying to find what he was referring to.  Was there a picture of a flower, kangaroo or violin anywhere? Nope - there was usually some street sign with those letters - though at the zoo that sometimes got a bit confusing!

Once he clearly knew all the letters inside out, he began to lose interest.  I tried to play games with him which involved recognizing DA vs PA vs LA, but that was too much. I tried to teach him the "baby letters," but he was not interested. For the next six months, he took a break from letters.

While on hiatus, other things occupied his interest such as speaking and singing.  Since starting pre-school at 20 months, he has been singing all sorts of songs, including his ABCs (and just yesterday, his first unprompted ZYXs).

After almost 6 months of hiatus, he recently started being interested in letters again. He had forgotten some of the capital letters and had to relearn them; and he quickly picked up the "baby letters."  But he was excited about it again; every time we pass the sign to our building, he flaps his wings, jumps up and down, and points at the letters.  We have to drag him away.  And without much repetition or seemingly effort, he was back to knowing all the letters. 

A while ago, I had purchased a French book for learning to read. I started by explaining what a syllable is, and then showed him examples in the book.  We then looked at pictures of various objects, each of which had the whole word written under it.  Each picture also highlighted one syllable, which he had to match with the corresponding syllable on the opposite page.  For example, there is a picture of a "tapis" (a rug) with PI highlighted.  The book begins with the letter P (i.e., PA, PE, PI, PO, PU), then moves on to T, and so on.  He pretty quickly figured out how to do the textual matching!  Finally, he was able to match the picture directly to the syllable without the intervening highlighted text.

In this fashion, last week, he read his first words: PAPA, PIPI and PIPO. Since then he often brings the book to me and asks to read ("je veux lire"). 

Earlier today, I made a memory game for him where each square is a different French word. I started with seven simple words: papa, pipi, mama, dada, papy (grandpa), momo (name of a character in one of his books), and dodo (sleep). 

We put all the cards face up. Noah chose a card, identified it and then found its pair. Although I was pretty confident he could find the pairs, I was not sure he would be able to identify/read the various cards. At first he was very tentative but he was very excited and concentrated and after a few rounds he was picking up a card and reading it and finding its pair. Here he is excitedly selecting a card. 

                               

When Dad got home, the first thing he wanted to do was to show him the matching game.  He keeps asking for more and keeps bringing the reading book to me. It is so great to see him be this interested in his letters again, and in learning to read. 

NOAH Gilbert

Today I taught Noah his last name. I am not sure why I had not done so earlier. It somehow did not seem necessary. Now when asked in French for his name he responds Noah Gilbert (Gi - as in gigi) and when asked in English he says Noah Gilbert (Gi as in guil).  It is so adorable hearing him say his full name. He also has started spelling out his first name: "N - O - A - H, Noah, me".

New Teeth

This evening, I was brushing Noah's teeth when I noticed a little speck of white behind his upper molar... sure enough, he has a new molar coming out. I then felt around for other new molars and... his other top back molar is also coming out. He has been a bit whiny after his nap these past few days but beyond that, I had not noticed any changes in his behavior. Only two more teeth to go!

Crafty Noah

We have always tried to do some crafts with Noah but only recently has it really taken off.  As there are no seasons out here, we have tried to do some season-specific projects. Below are Noah's winter window decorations - Noah helped make the snowflakes and snowmen and we discussed snow and looked at some pictures and books. He seemed to understand the concept of cold and snow but I don't think he can remember what it feels like as he was only a few months old the last time he experienced winter! One of these days, we should bring him to the snow park here (where they have fake snow and cold "weather").

Here he is making a turkey out of spices and grains we had in the kitchen.

We traced a turkey shape off the computer and then put glue onto a part of the turkey and poured on the spices or grains and then moved on to the next bit.  The finished product...

We also did a few non-seasonal projects. Our most recent craft project involved the days of the week. As Noah has weekly playdates, we made a weekly calendar of sorts. Noah decorated little cardboard circles and I added the days of the week. Then we attached some string/ribbon to the circles and taped on a picture of the person he would see on that day.

We put it up on the wall of his room to help him keep track of the days of the week. So far, he has been very into it and looks at it in the morning and tries to guess the day and who he will be seeing that day. Tomorrow.... Jeudi with Daniel!

It floats!

We recently started doing little experiments with Noah (mostly from the mini scientist books by Lisa Burke). We began by exploring buoyancy by floating/sinking plasticine balls/boat shaped models, lemons with and without the peel (a lemon with its peel will float due to the air bubbles in the peel whereas a "naked" lemon will sink). We then tried dumping cooked/uncooked eggs in water and salty water (the egg floats in salty water - "It floats," said Noah excitedly at the floating egg). Noah really enjoyed these experiments especially dropping the various objects in the water with a big splash.

We then examined heat conductivity. Ice cubes placed in hot water melt faster than those in cold water which melt faster than those in a plastic waterless bowl. Also ice cubes placed on a metal plate melt faster than on a wooden plate. Noah really got into these experiments - especially seeing the ice cubes slowly disappear. He began asking for more experiments and bringing me the books!

And here we made goop with cornstarch and water (a big hit as you can see): when you hold it tight, it is solid and when you let go, it becomes liquid. Lots of fun for everyone! 

Cooking with Noah

Noah has been an extraordinary imaginary-chef for as long as he could hold an imaginary spoon. In the past months, he has become more and more interested in cooking real food with us. Given Noah's long-standing love of food, it did not come as a surprise that he loves to hang around the kitchen and get involved in creating his favorite dishes.  Whenever one of us is in the kitchen, he pulls up his step-stool and then drags it around the kitchen with a loud screech to watch, help out, point, and see what is going on.

We have some routine meals that he likes to help with.  For example, just this evening, he helped make pizza with Daddy, stretching the dough, spreading the sauce, and dropping onions, mushrooms, and peppers all over. Of course, his favorite part is snacking on the pizza toppings, or some raw garlic if he can find any!  He also likes singing happy birthday to the tomatoes while they sit in the boiling water, and then peeling the tomatoes afterwards for the pizza sauce.  

Some of his favorite recipes are pretty typical for a 2-year old: he likes making chocolate chip cookies (who doesn't?), scones, and (banana) pancakes. Other favorites are a little more surprising, for example, Chana Masala (Indian chickpea curry) and hummus (our little guy is a BIG fan of chickpeas). He loves pureeing the chickpeas in the food processor ("Bzzzzzz").  He also likes making pita bread: kneading the little balls, rolling them out (or hitting them with the little rolling pin), and then putting them in the oven and shouting, "Wake up bread!" while we wait for the pita to puff up.

We've also done a few special cooking projects, like this "green meal." The appetizer was a green cucumber-based soup, followed by a pasta with cilantro pesto, roasted broccoli and mint chocolate chip cupcakes. 

                         

There was also "layer-night" where each dish was layered (tomato, portobello and mozzarela sandwiches, followed by vegetarian lasagna and baked smores). And there was Moroccan night where we looked up Morocco on the map and talked about the country and its food and then made tagine and Moroccan salads/dips.  I am not sure he enjoys the "themed" cooking  any more than general cooking but we have a good time planning!

Overall, Noah really seems to enjoy spending time in the kitchen with us. He keeps an eagle eye on everything that is going on, and makes sure to taste everything as it makes its way from raw to chopped to cooked.  (Holding up one finger, "One? I eat one piece?")  And he always knows what ingredient to add next: "Garlic, garlic!" 

Cousin Noah

We just found out a few days ago that Noah's Tonton Charles and Tata NiCole (ie my brother and sister-in-law) are expecting a baby girl. A big congrats to them. I was/am very excited but was not sure if/how Noah would react. I explained to him that Tata and Tonton were having a little baby girl and that would make him the little girl's cousin. He was going to be a big boy cousin. He got all excited and repeated Noah big boy cousin and Tata NiCole is having a baby. (He then of course asked if maman was having a baby for Noah and was a bit sad that he would not have his own baby at home to play with). A few days later he is still talking about his baby cousin. We can't wait to meet you little cousin/niece.

Croissants and Lychees

This morning, I read a new book to Noah. The protagonist, a certain "Petit Poilu," had some moon shaped pastries and some prickly round red fruit for breakfast. I asked Noah what the pastry was and he did not know. I then asked him what the little fruit were and he immediately responded lychee. I suppose I should not be surprised, given that we live in Singapore, but how strange it feels that he would recognize lychees and not croissants!

"Je Veux Manger"

Noah usually sleeps through the night. Sometimes he makes some noise in the early morning and then falls back asleep on his own. This morning around 5:30am we hear him whining and then "Je veux manger" - some kids have nightmares of scary monsters or animals, our kid dreams that he does not have enough food, cries out "I want to eat" and then falls back asleep!

Raccoon Eye Scare

After the One Hump Bump of Saturday (see the One Hump Bump post), we monitored Noah for 48 hours.  He was completely normal during that time. Yesterday evening, four days after he bumped his head, he started acting more cranky than normal and a bit clingy. He would not even go in the water during his swim class and then fussed when I tried to give him his shower. I figured he was just a bit tired or having a cranky moment. Then just before putting him to bed, we noticed that he had black bruising on the side of his eyes by the bridge of his nose.

We put him to bed and then quickly went on the internet and called the doctors in our family. Raccoon eye, as it is called, can be a sign of a fractured skull! Even though we doubted there was anything serious wrong, we decided not to take the risk (given his behavior and the raccoon eyes).  So we transferred Noah to his stroller and wheeled him asleep over to the doc across the street (open till midnight on a Saturday!). The doc saw him within 20min, looked at the raccoon eyes, checked his eye responsiveness and asked us many questions. Noah kept snoozing through all of this! The upshot was that we did not need to take him to the ER that night to get scans: raccoon eyes can happen even without a fracture, as the additional blood from a bump to the forehead can seep down and cause raccoon eyes. We are  of course continuing to monitor him for other symptoms.

We brought Noah home and transferred him back to his bed where he kept on sleeping! Today he has been completely normal (except for the raccoon eyes which seem to get better after a night of sleep or a nap and worse at the end of the day). Hopefully this will be the last post on the One Hump Bump.

Bananas Anyone?

On our way to brunch this morning, Noah discovered a banana tree on the side of the street!

Bananas anyone?

One Hump Bump

Yesterday evening, Noah whacked his head against the floor in his room. Seth and I were in the next room so we did not see it happen. From what we can gather he was kneeling on the floor and then fell/thrust himself forward. It does not make much sense. We quickly iced his forehead and put some special cream on it but the bump started growing and growing and growing. 

Noah has bumped himself before (he fell from the bed once and from the couch once) but NEVER did he have a bump this big.

He did not cry long or that loudly but just to be sure we took him to the local doctor (unlike in Switzerland, docs are open here till 10pm on a Saturday!). He examined Noah's eyes and the bump (and minor scratch also incurred most likely upon contact with the magnatiles on the floor) and told us there was nothing much to do at this point but to monitor him for the next 48 hours (the pics were taken when we got back from the doctor's).

The one thing we could do was to continue icing it with a cold gel patch. Here is Noah at dinner with his gel patch. He probably complained more about the gel patch than the bump itself! In solidarity I put on a patch too and then he was a bit less unhappy with his plight.

After dinner, we all played cards Noah and I wearing our stylish patches. On a side note (and this will probably be in another post), we have started playing some toddler card games (here a matching card game) with Noah and it's been lots of fun. He loves it and I still think it's so cool that we can actually play a real game together, taking turns and helping each other.

So far, it's been a little under 24 hours and Noah seems completely fine. The bump has diminished a bit and does not seem to hurt him at all. Luckily kids have soft skulls!

Reading with Audrey

A few days ago, Audrey came over for a playdate. Noah and she huddled under a cover and read together. I found them so cute together, I could not resist taking a few pics.