This morning, I suddenly realized how much my boys have grown when I have difficulty pushing the twin stroller up a slope at my mil's condo. It is more of a small step on a slope. Fortunately, a nice young man help me to lift the stroller up. Looking at them , I just realized how fast they have grown over the past year and it is only a short one month plus away to Ry's 3rd birthday and Br's 1st year.At the end of his second year, Ry has grown comfortably into into his big brother role and is able to look out for his little brother and say things like, "弟弟, no, don't touch" or "弟弟, naughty" or "弟弟, go away!" when he sees that his little tyrant brother is up to mischief. He would also breaks into a big smile when he comes over to our room and saw baby Br in the morning, shouting loudly, "Good morning, br br!" or "Br, Br......" , followed by a big beary hug that almost look like strangling the little baby! Also, recently, Ry loves to say that he is a "big boy" especially ever since I started to potty train him and telling him that he is a big boy and big boy wears underwear and go potty whereas baby wears diapers. Since then, he insists on wearing underwear but we are still far away from successful potty training yet as the child care center still requires Ry to wear diapers and had not started on potty training for all the pre-nursery kids yet. So our potty training can only be restricted to the evenings and weekend.
Ry has definitely settled into SG life and routine comfortably and is slowly eating some of the local food that he previously refused to touch! Thank goodness, his diet outside the house has expanded to chicken rice and 菜饭 instead of just fried rice only, though he still ferociously refuse anything with noodles.We have stopped his speech therapy since he finished his ten lessons near Christmas and decided to take a wait and see approach whether his language explosion will take place and also to give him some time to internalize the skills he has picked up during his therapies. What is assuring is that Ry is definitely picking up speech and is able to speak in 3 - 4 word sentences although most of his speech is still within 2 words but at least, now we can make sense of what he is saying. Interestingly, as he come closer to 3 yr old, we also find that his understanding skills improved much more and he could easily interpret what we say more easily. On a few occasions, we even caught him speaking in Mandarin and when we asked him to repeat those terms, he would shyly and sheepishly utter them so softly that we could hardly hear him or understand him. Needless to say, his Chinese sounds very "ang mo-ish" too. Hmmm, I think I have to build up his confidence in speaking in Mandarin as it seems like he think it is funny for him to do so too. Some of the Chinese words he say are "洗手， 吃饭， 睡觉， 老师".
Baby Br on the other hand has grown into our little tyrant, both in behaviour and in size. He has grown much taller and heavier after his initial episode of 水土不服 when we first moved back to SG from Boston. Now, he could finish a big bowl of porridge easily for his lunch and dinner. Like Ry, he loves to snack on cheerios. Fortunately, we found a cheap and local substitute (Favourite Ohs) which look exactly like and taste almost like cheerios but at half the price . So, when we put Br beside Ry, he hardly looks like he's two years younger.
Why is baby Br our little tyrant? This is because we could hear his voice all day long except when he's sleeping. He likes to yell and holler to get our attention. When we do not hear his voice, we would immediately have to check whether he has put anything into his mouth! Not only that, he is definitely more "sam seng" (i.e. Hokkien for rough / mischievous) than his brother. He now learns to climb onto the coffee table and likes to crawl his way into the room on his own and pulling open drawers and cabinets. Not only these, Br also has "itchy hands" and he loves to touch things and pull at stuff that is within his reach so much so that we could not bring him to places where there are delicate and breakable stuff while out shopping. We never have such a problem with Ry when he was the same age and come to think of it, Ry is really a "perfect" baby. However, I think my parents and my mil seem to think that Br is much cuter and interesting as compared to Ry. My mum commented that Ry is too 少爷 (gentleman) whereas baby Br is much more fun and interactive. The comment also extends to their eating habits as baby Br will eat almost anything you feed him whereas Ry only likes certain food and is pretty stubborn about trying new things.
I wonder is it always true that parents with two same sex kids will always have a 一动一静 aka an extrovert and introvert combination. On the ending note here, I look forward to sharing and learning more about my two boys in their new year.
