15 Months.

I can see so many changes in Meera. She's definitely growing up. Lately she's started running. It looks rather clumsy but she's quite fast! Also her 6th tooth has finally broken through.

As for her daily schedule, she has finally transitioned to 1 nap a day (or maybe it's me that has finally caved in to it). Initially I was a bit hesitant to reduce her naps. I guess I wanted her to sleep so I could have time to do my stuff. But I realised that both naps weren't going very well and I was spending more time trying to put her down for naps than necessary. The first few days were a bit rough. Which made me question if she was really ready for just 1 nap. But I decided that I would give it at least 2 weeks and by that time I could see a definite improvement.

So right now her schedule is:

8.30 am: Wake up
9.00 am: Milk (7oz.)
10.00 am: Breakfast
12.30 pm: Lunch
1.00 pm: Nap (1.5-2.5 hours)
3.30 pm: Milk (7 oz.)
6.00 pm: Dinner
9.00 pm: Milk (7 oz.) then bed

The nap is still a bit irregular. Sometimes she'll only nap for 1.5 hours. But there are days when she'll nap for more than 3 hours. So it's a bit difficult to schedule for now. But usually if her nap is a short one I give her a snack in between the milk and dinner since its so many hours in between. Overall though she gets about 12-13 hours of sleep each day.

Signing is going quite well. Occasionally she will sign milk and water (and actually mean it). Most of the time though she signs simply because she hears us say it. We've also been teaching her to nod her head for 'yes' and shake for 'no'. Not sure if she truly gets it though. Usually if I ask her something enthusiastically enough she will always nod yes!

A 'Full'filling Day

We had a really great time at the Jungle Gym in Bangsar. Just wanted to put up the pictures:





We also paid a visit to the Mothercare store there; its huge! Plus they had a lot of toys from ELC. Meera was quite taken with the toy kitchen. She spent a really long time (relatively speaking for her age) playing with it.

'More' Fishballs!

Today I decided gave Meera fishballs for the first time. And she loved it!

I was a bit hesitant to give it to her especially since she only has 5 teeth in the front and no molars. But I decided to try anyways. I quartered each one and put them in her porridge. After her first piece...she immediately signed 'more'!

Looks like she's getting the signs.

We're Moving....to Melbourne!

This has actually been an event that has long been anticipated. Jing was promised an oversea assignment for quite some time now. But till recently nothing concrete was ever mentioned. Then on the 20th of April (coincidentally on my birthday) his boss told him that it was definitely on and they were looking at July for the transfer. Yup. Talk about short notice. Of course who are we to complain. We are just glad that it's finally happening.

A part of me is still a bit shell shocked by the suddenness of this news. Plus the fact that we only have less than 3 months to prepare for it.

Today Jing's boss announced the move to his department so I guess its really happening (we still have to wait for our visas and medical clearance but I don't think that will pose any problems).

The Start of Tot School

From the time Meera was conceived I had started reading quite a bit about how to start 'educating' a baby. The information I came across was endless and quite overwhelming. There were lots of opinions and many were contradicting each other. Ultimately I decided that I would attempt to expose her to some stuff and see how she responded.

One of the earliest methods I tried was the Glenn Doman approach. I got a couple of his books and attempted to follow the instructions in it. However I found it was too regimented for me. I was never able to fit in all the 'exercises' that were recommended in any given day. There were so many different things to do and each thing had to be repeated too many times. After a few lame attempts I gave up. I persevered with reading flashcards but once Meera started crawling I had to give up on that as well. She simply would not sit still long enough for me to show more than one card a t a time!

I still felt that there should be something that I could do to encourage and improve on her developing skills. So I trolled the internet....and came across a lot of sites that were dedicated to exposing a toddler (to everything from alphabets to physics!) Some of these sites were so full of information that quite honestly I felt like a real slacker! the amazing thing was that these people had the time to actually do all sorts of activities with their kids and then BLOG about it! Hmmphh! Talk about peer pressure...

So one of the sites that I came across was called Tot School and it was full of links to others sites with parents of similar minds all trying to do stuff with their kids. So I decided to give it a go. Of course I was not as ambitious as most of them but I did incorporate some of their ideas. At least it gave me something productive to do with Meera. Beats sitting her in front of the TV!

So here's some of the stuff we did....

introducing the colour yellow....

PlayDoh...

Puzzles.