A mouse went into our laundry room, and caused some excitement in the house. We closed up all the windows and the doors, and put Rusty our cat in the room so that he could catch the mouse, and then we watched from the window what Rusty and the mouse were doing.

Here’s what Zara said while watching.
“Kory, Kory, Dock, Mouse went up the clock.”
“Mouse climbed up hang clothes there!” (refering to the coat hanger)
“Mouse climbed up the sky!” (referring to the mouse up on the curtain railing)
Then when she saw Rusty chasing after the mouse, she said, “Wow, Rusty so angry. Catch the mouse like a monkey.”
(In the end, Rusty being fat and lazy, quit after a while. It was Daddy who smacked the mouse with a broom when he got back from work. Zara didn’t see how ferocious Daddy was though, as she was asleep when Daddy murdered the mouse.)

The following day, I asked her, “Where is the mouse now?”
Zara : “Go up to the sky oh-ready (already).” (she last saw the mouse in the curtain railing)
Me : “You want to go and catch the muose?”
Zara : “Don’t want.”
Me : “Why don’t want?”
Zara : “Becauzzzzzzzz (dragging the word while thinking what to say)… Zara scared.”

I had a 10pm meeting, and was trying to tuck Zara in before my call.

I asked Daddy to ‘observe’ how I do it, so that he can tuck Zara in in future if I have night call instead of having to always depend on Tuyam. However, since Daddy always excites Zara to the extend of her being alert instead of sleepy, I told Daddy to lay low on the floor, and listen to how I handle her.

While Zara was telling me what she wanted to dream about, we started to hear some snoring. Oh well, this always happens (I mean him falling asleep while caring for Zara, but not the snoring) so I just ignored it, but Zara suddenly kept quiet and listened intently. Daddy must be very tired as he usually doesn’t snore, and it was getting louder.

Zara sat up suddenly, in a frightened voice she said, “Go down stairs! Daddy go downstairs.”
Me : “What happened girl?”
Zara : *with tembling voice* “Daddy go sleep downstairs.”
Me : “Why? Zara scared?”
Zara : *about to cry* “Zara scared scared. Daddy snore snore. So loud.”
So I had to give Daddy a shout and get him to leave the room before he upset Zara further.
After Daddy left, she calmed down and went to sleep.

In the morning, she remembered what happened, and she thought Daddy spent the night on the sofa.
“*pointed my side of the bed* Mummy sleep here”
” *poited to her cot* Zara sleep here”
“Daddy go down stairs sleep on the sofa.”
I asked, “Why Daddy sleep on the sofa?”
Zara : “because daddy snore snore like a pig until Zara scared. Oink Oink” (my fault, when I got Daddy to go down stairs the previous night, I told him he was snoring like a pig and frightening Zara)
and continued, “Daddy go downstairs, and then no more sound. Zara no more scared.”

Zara is 20mths, 4 more months till she’s 2yrs old.

~ Weight 9.7kg (0.5Kg in a month, yikes!)
~ Height : 81cm
~ No new teeth sprouting. Her 4 Cuspids (canines) are still not fully sprouted.

Dexterity :
Climbing up and down stairs while holding on to the side of the stairs.
Able to feed herself while using a fork.

Language :
~ She can count 1 to 10 now.
~ She’s started reciting the alphabets A to Z, but skipping quite a few letters in between (e.g. a, b, c, d, e, f, g then skip, and go straight to q, r, s.. etc).
~ She’s able to identify and name shapes, e.g. circle, square and triangle
~ She sings and recite the nusery rhymes to herself a lot, and is getting pretty good at it.
~ She even sings part of some Chinese children songs even when she doesn’t speak the languge (through memorising the sounds).
(and lots more which I’d captured in some of the posts)

Feeding and Food:
3 meals and 3 milk feeds a day. Eats a lot of snacks in between, like fruits, biscuit, chocolate, home made ice lollies, nuts, raisins, cheese etc.

Her current favourite junk food is chocolate (she especially loves the dark chocolate with marzipan that Daddy got from Germany), and fruit gummies.

She ‘orders’ her food nowadays, asking for “bread and cheese”, “egg sandwich”, “yogurt”, “pancake” for breakfast.
“noodle”, “porridge”, “fish ball” or just “egg” for lunch
And dinner she knows she always have what we have and she only ask to eat what we’re eating.

Emotions :
A loving girl, not afraid of strangers, but will check for our approval before being ‘friendly’ to one.

She knows being nice is not to be rude, not to say words like stupid, or push people away. She knows being nice is to say thank you, please, sorry when needed.

She loves watching Barney, Richard Scarry, Wheels in The Bus; and watches at least 2 shows a day (her max).

She’s in the midst of being weaned off thumbsucking (oh I’m so going to miss seeing her cute little thumb in her mouth).

Zara speaks a lot, and she’s picking up words from us daily. Being only 20months old, she makes some really cute mistakes.

Sauce is Horse to her.
As in Soya Horse and Chilli Horse. She would say, “Don’t want Chilli Horse. Spicy.”

Anything that has pines, or prickly she gets them mix up.
Porcupine is a Pineapple
Puffer fish is a Pine Cone
Pine Cone is a Porcupine
But a Pineapple is a Pineapple.

She pronunces the BL sound as BR. As in “the light brink brink”.

And when something drops, she says “Opsy Dentally”, fusing the phrase “Opsy Daisy” with “accidentally”.

She calls a biscuit, bis-kot, as how Tuyam pronunces it. Recently I corrected her, and now when she said biskot, she would self correct and mutter, “biscuit, not biskot, biskot is Mayay (Malay)”.

I have stopped going to the office for a while, and have been working from home for the past 1 month.

I take over the caring for Zara from Tuyam at 6:30pm as she has to prepare dinner.

What we’ll do is go to the park together, or have some water fun before she takes her bath. Then we’ll have dinner together at the table (Tuyam will feed her), normally this is when Daddy comes back. After dinner, we’ll watch a video or to do some drawing together.

At about 9pm, I’ll prepare her for bed, and Zara knows her bed time routine.

She has to wash her hands first or she can’t touch or get on the bed.
Then it’s teeth brushing, followed by changing her into her pajamas. I’ll get her to play on her own or get Daddy to watch over her, while I take my night shower.

After that, we let her choose 2 books from her stack which we will read to her.

After reading (up to 3 times a book, sometimes), we’ll just talk about what we read from the book. Sometimes she tries to ‘read’ us the book; sometimes she just talk about the story or book.
Like when we read Goldilocks and the 3 Bears, she would say something like
“Zara like porridge also.”
“Zara don’t like hot poridge, Zara like warm warm one.”
“Zara got Daddy, Mummy, and Zara.”
“Zara like soft soft bed. Can roll here roll there.” etc.
This is a good time to get her talking.

If she’s still full of energy, we’ll do some singing, or else, I’ll make her bottle of milk, turn the lights off and have her drink her milk. This is the time Daddy will say his good night, and leave the room.

After her milk, I’ll kiss her good night, “Good night Zara, sweet dreams.” and she’ll repeat, “Good night mummy, sweet dreams.”

If she didn’t drift off to sleep immediately, she would start telling me what she wants to dream about. I don’t know if she understood what dream is, but she would go ..
“Dream about…Small small cheese. Cold cold, yummy yummy one. Zara like.”
“and then… chocolate. Sweet sweet one! Very yummy. Zara put in the mouth.”
“Dream about… swimming. Zara swim swim with dolphins. Water cold cold. So nice!”
“Dream about.. the zoo. Zara see lion, elephant, giraffe..” etc etc
I’ll just be the facilitaor and prompt her to tell me more, but let her do all the talking.

Sometimes I get too tired, and I’ll drift off to sleep before her. Sometimes, I can hear the last word coming out from her mouth, and the next thing, she’s sound asleep.

This is the quality time we have with her, daily, unless I have a night meeting to attend and Tuyam has to tuck her to bed.

Zara has been calling herself Wawa instead of Zara lately. It must have been the influence of the Chinese song ??? (Nu Wawa – Doll of clay). I tried to correct her yesterday.
Me : Zara, what is your name?
Zara : Wawa.
Me : No, not wawa. Your name is ZARA.
Zara : *pointed to her chest* Wawa
Me : You can call yourself Wawa if you want, but your name is ZA-RA!
Zara : *quiet*
Me : Tell mummy again. What is your name?
Zara : Wawa’s name Cookie!
Me : *giggled* Your name is cookie? A biscuit?
Zara : *laughed* Hahaha. Wawa’s name cookie!
Me : Your name is not cookie la. Your name is ZA-RA!
Zara : Hahaha. *repeated after me* Not cookie la. ZA-AH!
Me : Yes. Your name is Zara.
Zara : Not cookie! *giggled*
Nowadays, I could really have a ‘conversation’ with her, and I can see, she has some sense of humour.

She has also started singing quite a fair bit. With all the miss pronunciation, most of the time, we could still make out what song she’s singing. Here’s Zara’s attempt to sing the song Baa Baa Black Sheep.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wJN84GyBwA]

I’m so into capturing Zara’s conversation these days because she’s never seized to surprise me every day with her choice of words; and she’s becoming so chatty, always talking when she’s in high spirit.

She likes to grope my breast or Tuyam’s, (not sure if this is the symptom of breast feeding her too long), and she’ll say when she does that, “Zara humsup (Chinese : act of a pervert).” (I told her before she can’t do that, because that’s ‘humsup’)

When her VCD starts showing with the volume turned off, she said, “Oh shit! No sound.” (I know this is from me, because I use SHIT very often).

Calming herself, she talked to herself, “Daddy is here, mummy is here mah, no need to be sked (scared)”.

She farted and she laughed, “Mummy, Zara fart fart!” “Zara like a skunk.” “Zara crazy girl!” “Zara joker” “HaHaHaHa”

Note : This post was written a month ago, and didn’t get posted it until today.

Daddy: Zara, do you love Daddy?
Zara : Larf
Daddy : How much do you love Daddy?
Zara : Two
Me : Zara, what about mummy? Do you love mummy?
Zara : Larf
Me : How much do you love Mummy?
Zara : SEVEN!

Haha. Daddy 0, Mummy 1

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I’m already into my 2nd trimester. Tummy is already showing. This time, it’s protuding front wards instead of going side ways like the time I have Zara.

My appetite is getting better, although I’m still not able to eat as much as I used to when I have Zara.

Because of my age, my next hurdle is doing the amniocentesis around 16weeks (this round I’m not going for the tripple blood test). For those of you who don’t know what this is, it’s to inject a very long syringe into the abdomen to collect amnionic fluid. The fluid collected is then sent to a lab for culturing to check if the baby has any genetic or chromosomal abnormalities. The wait time for the result is 3 weeks. A long wait!

I remembered the last time when I have Zara, I didn’t celebrate until the amnio test came back to say everything is ok. I didn’t dare to celebrate. It would be the same this round.

Zara is angry I left her.

When I called her on Sunday, she chatted to me, ‘promised’ to be a good and brave girl. Say Hi and bye nicely.
When I called her on Monday, she came to the phone, said, “Zara play ball”, then quickly said bye and left.
When I called her this morning, she didn’t want to come to the phone, I could hear her shouting, “Don’t want mummy.”
“Don’t like mummy.”
“Stupid mummy XXXXX” (XXXXX being my name)

Tuyam told me the whole of yesterday, she has been mumbling to herself, “Stupid Mummy XXXXXX.”

Stupid is a word she picked up but I have taught her not to use, she never uses it when I’m around. She must be very angry with me for leaving her, using the word against me. *big sigh*

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

On shopping and eating, I don’t find it so great here. I wanted to get shoes and clothes for Zara, but I have been shopping and couldn’t find much.

Food has also just been so so (even with local colleagues’ recommendation), the only nice food eaten so far is the roast goose… Aaaa, I would like to sink my teeth into another piece of the goose.

I’m away for work in Hong Kong. Little Zara is taken care by Tuyam with MIL’s supervision.

Zara waiting for mummy to come home.

Here’s a conversation that took place before I left.
Me : Zara mummy sit airplane go work work ok?
Zara : Cannot. Mummy go work work, Zara cry.
Me : Mummy will buy you nice baju (Malay : clothes), pretty shoes, and a big big present woh. Ok?
Zara : Ok.
Me : What present does Zara want mummy to get?
Zara : Hmm.. (deep in thought), Ribena. Zara want mummy buy Ribena.
Haha. Such an innocent request.

Daddy told me Zara has been very good whole day yesterday. She only cried after she heard my voice when I called home before her bed time. But Daddy managed to calm her down by telling her if she cried, mummy will also cry when at work, then both Zara and mummy will be crying. She stopped after that, such a sensible child.

I will keep blogging to minimal as I’ll be kept busy in meetings and shopping after work.