Zara’s speech development is just so amazing. There are things we didn’t consciously teach her, but she just picks up along the way. She also pronounces most words very accurately, just like an adult. At times, she surprised us with how her little mind words, stringing those words together. Here are some of what she’s able to say.

In the mornings, when Zara wakes up and hears the sound of shower in the bathroom, she’ll point to the bathroom. “Daddy taking shower in the toilet.” Points to me, “Mummy lye down on the bed”. Points to herself, “Zara sit down on Zara’s bed (her cot).”

Daddy wanted to shower Zara, and told her, “Come Zara, Daddy bath you.”
Zara exclaimed, “Oh Ma (my) God!” then, she continued to say, “Don’t want Daddy do. Want mummy do.” and she ran towards me.
(don’t know if she knows what Oh My God means, but she uses it so appropriately)

I took a tub of yogurt to the car thinking of having it in the office. In the car, Zara spotted it and said, “Yogurt! Yogurt!” wanting some.
Tuyam took her Petite Miam (yogurt for kids) out, and asked her, “You want mummy’s one or this one?”
Zara said, “Zara wants this one (pointed to her Petite Miam). Mummy’s one not so nice. Zara’s one nicer.” (I was surprised she knows how to use the word ‘nicer’.)

We were in the car and Zara suddenly just said, “So hot outside. Wind blowing blowing. So nice.” (She saw some branches swaying in the wind under the hot sun.)
I was surprised at her remark, but I responded, “yeah, nice right, the wind blowing?”
Zara continued to say, “Nice. Wind blowing Zara’s face. Wind blowing Zara’s hair. In kakak’s room.” She was referring to the fan in Tuyam’s room.

She recently is also able to differentiate: market for wet market (where we “buy fish, buy vege, buy manana/banana, buy papaya”); supermarket for grocery shopping (where we “buy vitagen, buy cheese, buy bread, buy pear”); and restaurant (where we “eat dinner”). She pronounces market, supermarket and restaurant perfectly.

Here are few of her common vocabulary blips. She sometimes call a porcupine pineapple, a guinea pig guinea pork, sun as sunflower (she knows what a sunflower is before she knows what sun is). And of course she can’t differentiate Me and You, she’s always asking people to “Carry you” when she meant “Carry me”.

Here is another shocker.

Last Saturday, we went to Bangsar Village to do our grocery shopping (good for gourmet Cheese, and good European styled bread).

While I was claiming for parking at the information centre, Zara suddenly let go my hand, and ran towards a boy shouting, “Handsome boy!”.
She stopped right in front of a startled little boy aged about 7yrs old, who was quite good looking. She grinned broadly, touched the boy’s face, waved her hand and said, “Hi! Handsome korkor.”
The boy looked surprised, but politely waved back at her and walked on.

Zara continued staring at his back profile. When he reached the exit and turned back to look at Zara, Zara waved back, “Bye! Handsome kor kor.” And started giggling, like a love struck teenager.

Daddy and I just looked at each other utterly shocked at her behaviour! Mind you, my little girl is only 18mths old.

We brought Zara to the football field in our residential area on Sunday morning. Nobody was playing foot ball, so we got the whole field to ourselves. It was wonderful, Zara was so happy to be running in such a big flat grass field.

She was happy chasing after her ball, throwing or kicking the ball.

Daddy kicked the ball into the goal post and Zara shouted hooray (trust her be the goal keeper huh?)

Happy, Sweaty Zara.

For lunch, I made Pumpkin soup using the recipe from River Cafe Cook Book. However, because I didn’t have any chicken stock, I used the Maggie chicken granules (the one without MSG); gosh, it was so yucky (maybe because it’s change of taste bud for me as well), all I could taste is the chicken stock taste, blech. Daddy walloped his bowl without complaint though. The avocado, zucchini and turkey breast sandwich was oh, so good.

As for Zara, she has been crazy about cheese. On both Sat and Sun, all she wanted for breakfast and lunch was, “bread and cheese”. Offered her anything and she turned her face and said, “Don’t want”. So it was bread and cheese for her.

On Sat morning, she even woke up and I think she was trying to tell me what she dreamt about (but of course she’s too young to know what a dream is). She told me first thing in the morning when she opened her eyes, “Got big big cheese.” before she smiled and stretched.

Anybody knows any good but not too salty cheese to go with bread or cracker for the little one? I’d been giving her Kraft, Baby Bell and the smiling cow cheese spread. We give her some of our gourmet chedder as well, but it’s too salty and I always feel guilty after giving her some.

Hui Sia asked why I don’t mention much about the pregnancy in my blog. Actually I wanted to wait after the 1st trimester before I include updates of the pregnancy since things can still be very uncertain.

We went to see the Dr 2 weeks ago for my first check up. By right at 7 weeks, the baby’s heartbeat should be visible. However, the Dr couldn’t find one. He told us to return in 2 weeks time. You can imagine how worried we were.

Yesterday we went again. This time, the heartbeat was visible (at least to the Dr). From the size of the baby (slightly more than 1cm), Dr thinks that I’m only 7weeks + pregnant. Still very early in the pregnancy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Weaning Zara wasn’t difficult. After I knew I was pregnant, I increased another feed of formula to Zara. I still let her nurse 1st thing in the morning and before she went to bed. I think my milk supply reduced a lot, because she still asked for a bottle after nursing.

A week later, the nursing time also reduce, sometimes she just politely pulled down my t-shirt when I offered her the breast and said, “Close. Want bottle milk.“. At this stage, I found that the taste of the milk has changed as well, from something sweetish it has become a bit sour, probably due to the pregnancy hormones, nature’s way of weaning a child.

By the time she turned 18mths (3 weeks later), she totally stopped wanting the breast. Happy to just have the “bottle breast“, as she calls it.

I was expecting engorgement, and some discomfort, but maybe because the weaning process was spaced out, I do not have any of this. The amazing thing is, the breasts immediately shrunk 2 cups smaller! Just like that. (If only the tummy can shrink in this manner.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve started telling Zara about the baby as well. She likes to bounce on my tummy, and I’d told her she can’t do that anymore because there’s a baby in my stomach, and the baby will feel the pain if she jumped on me. She seems to understand it.

Now, if she forgot and started bouncing on me, I’ll tell her, “Zara cannot jump on mummy”. She would quickly stop, kiss my stomach and say, “Got baby inside”.