The Georgous

As Georgia’s vocabulary continues to explode at an astounding pace, as it does with most toddlers, it is fascinating to notice that she is not just copying and mimicking what we say but is starting to build some sentence structure and grammar, albeit miniature versions.

That’s how Me’s becomes the new possesive noun.

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We have long lived with the assumption that putting Georgia in nursery while we both earn enough to maintain our current standard of living was a necessary evil.

Time, or the lack of it, was the main stumbling block….there were never enough hours in the day and we assumed that Georgie would know who we were and how important we are in her life…or so we thought.

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Georgia says “TOUCH!”

The Battle of Wills has begun.

Georgia has started saying some Hokkien Chinese words!

Her conversations so far have been mainly in English – we do seem to speak it as the main form of communication but not intentionally or planned in any way. We do however try to speak in our own ‘Rojak’ or melting pot of language. So I’ve been wondering when Georgia would come up with something from the other languages we speak and what those words would be.

‘Jiu’ as in pang-jiu (English: pee-pee) is her first, clearly focussed on my obsession with trying to get her out of her nappies.

Next came…. ‘bak’ as in chiak bak (literal English : eat meat).

I wonder what’s next?

I know it sounds so cliche but I was thinking the other day about how quickly children grow up (don’t we all?), and then it occurred to me that to a great extent, it is how much and what we expect of them.

And then I had yet another ‘West meets East’ parenting revelation….

Type ’17-month old toddler’ in to Google and you are inundated with a whole host of (very good, mostly Western) websites detailing, the milestones your child should be reaching at this age, how he/she should be walking or climbing, saying some words and then we come to the bit about self-feeding. Most of these websites will tell you, that your child can at this age feed themselves, mostly using their fingers and eating finger-food. They are also learning to grasp the use of a spoon at this age, and some will master it more quickly than others. So, in a nutshell, expect to be able to sit your child down at the dining table during mealtimes, give him/her food on a plate and while you are warned to expect mess, your child should without a doubt be able to eat independently.

Now, Georgia does perfectly fine…she has perfected the art of using her spoon. In fact, this evening she showed us she could use her spoon in both her left and her right hand. And if I keep a hawk’s watch on her and move at lightning speed to catch ‘raining’ food, there’s hardly any mess on the floor at all.

A week ago though, she went through a funny phase of only wanting to use her fingers, and sometimes she got fed-up and just sat with the baby-bird-type of open mouth waiting for food to magically appear.

This was when I had a flash-back to when I was about 5 or 6-years old, in my grandmothers house (Penang, Malaysia) playing with my cousins. We were all cleaned and washed and were being fed dinner out in the garden, which meant, we could pretend to be aeroplanes flying about and come back for food as soon as we were done chewing. By being fed, I mean either my mum or aunt had a plate of  food from which they were feeding us from. And I seem to remember this happening quite often. This… in contrast to my 17-month old, feeding herself at the table consistently at every meal-time.

Do Western parenting philosophies and ideologies expect children to grow up more quickly than Eastern ways?

This is how much Georgia weighs.

Geez, no wonder my arms ache!

You know how everyone just knows that women are better than men at multitasking?

Well, Georgia showed me something, actually multiple things (!) that I believe puts to rest the question ‘why ?’

 At the tender age of 16 months, this ‘kidd-o’ mine is able to walk, read her book (Clara Cow wraps up warm) AND jig to music all at the same time.

 Doesn’t that just explain why women can multitask and men (well, most men anyway) can’t…..we start young!

Would you believe that one day short of turning 17 …. months – that is, Georgia has decided, (rightly so, I might add) that I do not have a fashion sense.

There’s something about being a Physical Science Academic that throws fashion out the window. What’s the point when you’re always in a white lab coat or worse, awe-inspiring grubs might be forever stained with UV-reacting silver chloride or potassium permanganate! And so my little one has twigged early on, that my dress sense is not the best or worst still, non-existent!

So yesterday, when I tried convincing her, off-gray long-sleeved t-shirts were necessary, in this mad central-heating induced summer. She shook her head NO! NO! NO! so violently i could not get the t-shirt on. And what did she want??

Her pretty pink, Minnie-Mouse-lounging-in-the-sun t-shirt! (Aunty Mei and Uncle Brendan would be oh!-so proud!)

Well, I gave in, clearly the girl knows how to dress up, more than I can say for me!

Quite clearly my first attempt a blogging happened 388 days ago — and died a quick sure death, I did not write again after the first post…it was never published!  So in the spirit of blogging-proper, here it is below in all it’s full glory – unedited. (WARNING – long post!)

15 weeks… in a flash  – written 388 days ago  (see Georgia at fifteen weeks)

Amazing that G is now exactly 15 weeks today.

Time seems to have gone everywhere and nowhere all at the same time…a bizzare phrase I’m sure but you see, every day that I spend at home with baby, i wonder when she’ll next sleep for longer than 20 minutes or if she’ll decide to eat over the next 3 or will it be 4 hours—or maybe less. And yet! at the same time, I can’t help thinking that a significant proportion of my maternity leave is nearly over—and I still hardly know her!

Not to mention this is technically the first blog post! – although I’m hoping to back date things.

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