Transition Period

It's official. I now have a preschooler at home. On her 40th month, she declared that she's already a big girl.  She consistently refuses to latch & orders me to feed her brother when he wants milk.  "He needs you more, Mom. He's always hungry!"  We don't adhere to a strict lesson plan but she can now write her nickname and her favorite letters (A, C, E, H, I, J, O, X) and numbers. She adds & subtracts single digit numbers (when she feels like it) and sings songs in her spare time.  English is her first language but she understands a bit of Tagalog, Mandarin, Spanish, German, French & Korean. Thank you, Netflix and Youtube.  When we're abroad, she's confident to play even with non-English speaking kids and attempts to communicate with them by gesturing more. Hopefully she gets to acquire other Filipino dialects too as she grows older.

She learned how to poop in the potty successfully at six months because she knew how to say "googoo" (poop!) early on.  For other parents, they say they get to train their kids to pee first in the potty before they develop the patience to wait for poop. But I dunno, up to now it's challenging for us to rush to the potty for "wiwi" (pee).  I always have fresh underwear ready and diapers when she sleeps/goes out with us.  I didn't pressure her to potty train when we found out I was pregnant with Leon more than a year ago.  It's only now that we're trying again to potty train for wiwi.

Leon, on the other hand, now knows how to sip fresh milk or fruit juice from a straw but still prefers to latch when table food is too sweet or salty for him.  This seldom happens when other people are around; he's such a show off to guests.  He can dance on cue and walk briskly. He started walking without holding unto rails before he turned one.

He also knows how to sit on the toilet bowl for cleanups.  But unlike Leji who was born with her own verbal language that we understood (she was quite consistent), Leon could hardly talk.  They say boys take more time to learn how to talk in general so we go by gut feel to comprehend what he communicates.  He understands instructions but his spoken vocabulary is limited to "baba" (go down usually to eat), "up" ("carry me" or "wash me upstairs"),"ter" (water), "sa pa"/"more", "back" & "ball" (he loves B!).  He relies heavily on gestures; he points to his sippy cup when he's thirsty and bangs the door of the room he wants to enter next.  He doesn't like TV as much as Lej and loves to run around, crawl & pretend to be some dog/monster/superhero/all at the same time.  He's generally jolly; he laughs all the time. He loves familiar faces; he hugs & bites/kisses us all the time. 

Thank you, Lord!