Do you speak Chinese ?

Here is a funny story. A girl at Toy r us asked Kay, while we were shopping that day, if she spoke Chinese. And being our confident little toddler, she put her hands on her hips and nodded 'yes'. So the girl asked if she knew how to say 'pink' in Chinese...and there was silence. She just stood there, not knowing what to say. Poor Kay....

This is the extent of her learning Chinese so far. It's all our fault for not implementing it consistently. It's hard when we don't speak it at home to each other. And we also want her to know Cantonese and later French or Spanish and maybe Japanese ... so it's going to be a huge learning curve. Try harder mummy and daddy !

Rachel's birthday

With the new year beginning, we are going to be attending more birthday parties. And the year always starts with Rachel's birthday in january. We had a lot of fun at the Woodbine fantasy fair last week. In fact, so much fun that Kay didn't wind down at all ...until 1.40am. She was a little over-stimulated by the plane-rides, merry-go-round, carasole, train rides and excitement at 7pm at night. But all's good after one episode of Caillou on the PVR.

I think the best thing about this age is seeing them interact with friends, discovering the world and learning languages, sounds, sights and smells. Textures of playdoh, licking chocolate from the fingers, decorating cupcakes are all favourite activities.

Adventures in learning

Singing a chinese song, switching from Pink to Green, writing her letters A to H ... Kay is discovering a new world in languages and loving music & dance. She even made up her own rhythm when there isn't a song ... da da che, da da che, da da che, da da che, da da che.

Visit from Popo & Gong Gong

Don't even know where to begin now. We have seen and done so much, Kay has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of speech and maturity of character. And seeing her with her grandparents is simply a joy. There is nothing that can replace the kind of love that grandparents can give. It's unassuming & without boundaries. Popo and Gonggong have spoiled her rotten.

She has even picked up some "Singlish" phrases from them along the way. Everything begins with "got" as opposed to "have". It's cute. We are quite sure she will correct it soon enough but it's just amazing how quickly they pick up words and expressions from us. Spelling her name, talking about coffee and making lattes, saying her numbers is mandarin, english and spanish (thanks to Dora), are just some of the many skills she has mastered in the past 2 months. Popo has also taught her to say "tears","snort" and "saliva" in Cantonese. Very useful words for her to get around life with :). And she has learned a little astrology about the Animal Signs of the Year we were born. She knows that she is born in the Year of the Pig, Mum is a Cow, daddy & Popo are Rats and Gonggong is a "Woof-woof" Dog. Fantastic memory this girl has. Now I can safely ask her where things are and she is right 90% of the time. The other 10% she is probably goofing around and trying to be funny.

Wish we were closer to New Zealand, but I guess we'll be back to communicating via Skype. There'll be no more late night dates for daddy and mummy for a long while. Today, is Popo's last night in Toronto. Gonggong has left a month earlier. It'll be buckets of tears again at the airport tomorrow. But that's just the sweet bitterness of life. For Kay, it will be back to Aunty Dorin's house on Thursday and we will be back to working late nights (not that this has stopped).

Here are some of the joyful moments spent with Popo and GongGong in Toronto. And wishing Popo a safe trip back to NZ. As Kay tells me when she is about to get a time-out, " I'll be nice, mummy. I'll be nice." We'll all try to be nice until we see Popo and Gonggong again.

Mum ... it's OK.

It's time to officially announce that we are potty trained. I think it has been 2 weeks of clean diapers in the house. We are still working on the nap time pees but that is negligible. Really proud of Kay for just "getting it" so quickly. Eveything happened within 4 days... in the weekend. No diapers, lots of laundry for one day and we're done. I must say she is a pretty smart kid....very in tune with her body and is starting to be able to control it.

Just before bedtime today, she showed us that she knows how to control my computer the mouse and "click" on the play button to make the video re-play again. I mean ...she is two and I didn't even tell her where the play button is. She just figured it out by watching me do it.

And when your toddler tries to calm you down ... you know she is growing up. Mummy (me truly) has been rather short tempered recently, finding myself yelling or getting mad because she simply doesn't listen. But Kay would turn around, give me a hug and say "it's ok mummy, Kay Kay is here....its' ok mummy". How can anyone be angry after that? And recently, she has been calling me "mum" .... sounded like some teenager !