Oct 28th 2009 "Papa's shirt is red, mama's shirt is red." and i havent even noticed!
Oct 28th 2009 How tuso can a gremlin get? "Mama I want hug & kiss" Hugs me,curls feet backward & I end carrying him. He knows "Pls carry me" lead him none
Oct 27th 2009 Grinning... the Gremlin said "Papa Arnel, you better hurry, let's go". he picked this line from Agent Ozo, so we call him Agent Parrot...
Oct 26th 2009 Being hopeful of being vindicated, the Gremlin's voice resounding inside the toilet while singing. and he gets to memorize lyrics...
Oct 26th 2009 Thinking of the best adjectives: parrot, talking machine, tarabitab, humabutelew...
Oct 26th 2009 Toddlers know better - Kalel on coconut juice: The juice is yummy mama duno!
Oct 20th 2009 Is grinning at the Gremlin, to the shirt he said " No, I don’t want the color!"
Oct 17th 2009 Amazed at how the gremlin is picking up soundtracks of Jimjam and Disney Channel's programs...
Oct 5th 2009 wishing am not missing anything in my entries... wishing this will be the normal monthend- not stressed...
Sep 23rd 2009 sent my Gremlin off to the yellow school van for his first day of nursery school
Aug 2nd 2009 "Why they do that?" Kalel asked while watching King Arthur's fight scenes... hmmm starting to be like his mom. asking why questions...
Jul 27th 2009 Don’t watch poker face, not good for babies ~ Kalel told Nicole, his three-month-old baby cousin.
Jul 21st 2009 Wondering on my gremlin's career interest (too early!) as he puts a string around his neck and says "I am the doctor, I will go to town".
Jul 19th 2009 Giggling on Kalel's statement: why lolo is drunk?
Jul 15th 2009 My gremlin said : The sun is hiding because its dark
(I have just started using Twitter to at least note these ones but I look forward to summarizing my inbox for other notes I have about the Gremlin)
To make up of playing time with Kalel, we added naming car brands during our walks. The first brands he could readily identify were Toyota (as they are in numbers in car parks), and BMW (being the first car he was taught).
-- Nissan, Honda, Kia, Lexus, Ford, Infinity, GMC, Chevrolet, Mercedes, Hyundai, Jeep
From returning from Baguio, we hear him sing lines of these songs (not necessarily the titles please, =))
- Wake Me Up When September Ends
- Nobody, Nobody but You
- Poker FAce
- I've Got This Feeling, ooh
- Boom, boom pow (Kel-ay Get It, Kel-ay GEt It)
I had posted this in facebook and thought documenting it here :)
Kalel and his dad attended Church. Atmosphere was suppose to be low as the prayers were about Ondoy and calamities. My 3-year-old son, innocent as he is, gleefully sang and participated in the mass. One elder, a stranger, thought he brought a nice feeling so she handed the gremlin AED 100...October 9, 2009
The elder (we call her aunt/ tita) even asked Kalel what he wants to buy, and she jokingly suggested a pair of shoes. So here is the Adidas we bought with the AED 100 for.
Hubby and I are not regular Church goers but we feel obliged for our son as:
-- He loved going to Church during his stay in Baguio, he himself requesting to go.
-- He particularly knows the different Churches he sees back home
-- A Church is among those he regularly scribbles
-- He knows Father Benny (Castaneda)
-- To strengthen his prayer time which they taught him back home (we pray with him before he hits bed at night. Among his prayers back home was "Jesus bless mama, papa)
Kalel has people around him speaking mainly Ilokano- Tagalog dialects, yet he speaks English. Programs he watch are among his teachers, including Barney, Playhouse Disney's, Jimjam's, Dora, Little Einsteins.
Though he has the Filipino English accent and pronunciation, some still thinks he has some slang. Here are some of his words:
- Kel-ay = Can I (eg, Kel-ay take a bath?)
- The woler fountain is geling bigger and smaller = The water fountain is getting bigger and smaller
- Tomowow = Tomorrow
- Bue = Blue
- E-k = ok
- Wehd = Red
- Mimub = Remove
Basically
-- letters R and N becomes L when in between two vowels used in a sentence, otherwise are mostly pronounced properly
-- R becomes silent when in the middle of a word
Today I want to note my amazement at my Gremlin's humming along with the different "sound tracks" of Jimjam's and Disney Channel's individual programs. We were at home for most of the day and the tv was on while we do our stuff. Only then had we noticed Kalel knowing the next tunes of the program at hand. I am amazed because he had been watching these channels for barely a month just yet.
While it hadnt occured yet on me that my son might be a musician, this week alone had two persons saying we let him join Kids For Christ to hone his singing, and also to let him join the karaoke singing contest.
How can a mum like me tell that my son is gifted with a singing voice when I am getting used to hearing him shout at the top of his voice wherever we go. But yeah, parents should help develop their kids' talents.
KALEL'S FIRSTS
First memorized nursery rhyme: Twinkle twinkle little star (because he hears me sing it everyday to him)
First Barney song he liked: I love you (he asks us to sing this everytime we put him to bed)
First non-kid song we heard him sing at early two-year-old: Wake Me Up When September Ends (he has been hearing it on the car radio)
With our Gremlin back here with us after a great seven-month stay back home in Baguio, we now again need to have somebody look after him if we're out of home.
We got excited after knowing that some nursery schools offer 7am to 7pm childcare services. This means we may not need to spend on a nanny! So off we paid the fees to the nursery nearer to our apartment. This one has Filipino nannies, so we felt some sort of security.
Kalel's first day of school got us excited and even had the camera as we waited for the yellow van. Unluckily, his dad wasn’t expecting the humidity to blur the camera lens.
Two days of school and the school van missing to pick him on the third day, we stopped sending him. We were frustrated because --
• We let the gremlin use nappies on his first day and he came home still using them. He ended up with rashes days later.
• We didn’t let him use nappies the second day and he came home clothes changed as he pee-d on them. As Kalel is potty-trained and communicates when he needs to use the toilet, we were wondering what level of attention he is actually receiving that he got his clothes wet.
• We happily bought him different food boxes labeled as Kalel's breakfast, Kalel's lunch and Kalel's snack, only to see most of these back untouched when he came home.
And so we agreed the gremlin is anyhow too young for school schedules -- of forcing him out of bed early (he told us "What's the problem with my eyes" when he was still groggy to wake up); of being unsure if he had his meals. We thought to let him enjoy playtime at his age. It is after all not just school where learning is. While he was away back home in Baguio, his communication skills caught up, because he had people and nature around him as his teachers. Imagine us amazed at his speech improvement when he came back – English in full sentence and some real vocabulary. He has somehow become a normal toddler.
Anyway, back to nanny options here in Dubai. For working parents who need someone to look after their babies/ kids, there are:
• Childcare/ nursery schools. The rate varies for half or full day. Half day rates range between AED500 to AED 2000 a month. The school bus could fetch the child to school and back home at a separate fee. The more expensive ones have better facilities though don't warrant excellent childcare. My colleague who's paying expensively visited and caught her 1.5 year-old baby wandering alone at the play area nibbling with a not-so-clean toy strewn on the floor. The baby gets sick easily too.
• Home-based parents cum nannies, who while looking after their own kids, are also accepting to care after other kids during the day. You drop and take your child to their house when needed. Monthly rates are cheaper, like AED400 for half day, and AED700 for whole day. Hourly rates could be as much as AED20 per hour.
The denominator above is on your trust that your child is cared well as you would do yourself.
We got excited after knowing that some nursery schools offer 7am to 7pm childcare services. This means we may not need to spend on a nanny! So off we paid the fees to the nursery nearer to our apartment. This one has Filipino nannies, so we felt some sort of security.
Kalel's first day of school got us excited and even had the camera as we waited for the yellow van. Unluckily, his dad wasn’t expecting the humidity to blur the camera lens.
Two days of school and the school van missing to pick him on the third day, we stopped sending him. We were frustrated because --
• We let the gremlin use nappies on his first day and he came home still using them. He ended up with rashes days later.
• We didn’t let him use nappies the second day and he came home clothes changed as he pee-d on them. As Kalel is potty-trained and communicates when he needs to use the toilet, we were wondering what level of attention he is actually receiving that he got his clothes wet.
• We happily bought him different food boxes labeled as Kalel's breakfast, Kalel's lunch and Kalel's snack, only to see most of these back untouched when he came home.
And so we agreed the gremlin is anyhow too young for school schedules -- of forcing him out of bed early (he told us "What's the problem with my eyes" when he was still groggy to wake up); of being unsure if he had his meals. We thought to let him enjoy playtime at his age. It is after all not just school where learning is. While he was away back home in Baguio, his communication skills caught up, because he had people and nature around him as his teachers. Imagine us amazed at his speech improvement when he came back – English in full sentence and some real vocabulary. He has somehow become a normal toddler.
Anyway, back to nanny options here in Dubai. For working parents who need someone to look after their babies/ kids, there are:
• Childcare/ nursery schools. The rate varies for half or full day. Half day rates range between AED500 to AED 2000 a month. The school bus could fetch the child to school and back home at a separate fee. The more expensive ones have better facilities though don't warrant excellent childcare. My colleague who's paying expensively visited and caught her 1.5 year-old baby wandering alone at the play area nibbling with a not-so-clean toy strewn on the floor. The baby gets sick easily too.
• Home-based parents cum nannies, who while looking after their own kids, are also accepting to care after other kids during the day. You drop and take your child to their house when needed. Monthly rates are cheaper, like AED400 for half day, and AED700 for whole day. Hourly rates could be as much as AED20 per hour.
The denominator above is on your trust that your child is cared well as you would do yourself.
Kalel had since love pens and paints. While he was away for seven months, we would just imagine as his Lola Cute describe how he draw and tell stories of his arts. For one, he loves drawing big and small Churches while naming them. He also loves drawing his Lolo pogi's beu (blue) car, so we asked him to draw his papa arnel's car. And here it is drawn by the wall:
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