Holiday Milestones!

This Holiday season has certainly been quite an eventful one in terms of really exciting milestones that Nico has reached!

First of all, we have finally successfully weaned him from the bottle. I know we may be really late compared to other kids, being at 37 months - but well, we finally got there. I told everyone in the household (including Nico) that after Christmas, we would finally bid the bottle goodbye. And so we did. On the morning of the 26th, we asked his help to pack away the bottles and stashed them away to a place he would never find them. He asked for the bottle later in the day, but upon realizing they were nowhere to be found, gave up and never asked for it again. Of course, the  milk intake has significantly decreased since then -- for about 1.5 liters a day (yes, crazy I know) to about 250-300ml a day. I've been told that kids who wean from the bottle tend to lose a bit of weight while adjusting. Am hoping that passes quickly since it takes us months to pack some pounds on this little boy!

Second big thing for the holiday season - he FINALLY slept through the night! I never thought I would experience the day that this babe of mine would sleep 8 hours without rousing! With his milk throughout the night (about a combined 600 ml), I am unluckily woken up between 1-5 times a night with a request for milk. Of course, the amount of milk taken in directly affects how many times I need to wake to change his nappy to avoid overflow onto the bed! So anyway, last night - the 5th night without the bottle, he slept a good 8.5 hours without a peep. I actually had to check on him at about 8 am to see if he was still alive! Hiphiphooray! Crossing my fingers this is not a fluke and I get more of these slumber filled nights coming my way.

Additionally, his sentence construction and verbalization of thoughts and wants have really developed over the last few weeks! While he is generally good at expressing himself and speaks very clearly (and as my household staff would say, SLANG) - my husband and I have been pleased at the progress he is making in speaking. Sentences peppered with "of course", "I'm wondering about" and "how did you do this so fast" are such a treat to hear!

Lastly, he finally has more discipline and a longer attention span to sit long enough to finish his pencil skills and counting worksheets (about 15 sheets at a time), and complete his 50 pc puzzles without breaks. We no longer have to cajole him back to the desk to finish a sheet at a time, or line up all his toy animals to "cheer" for him with every page that he finishes. Oh, the things we had to resort to before to get him to sit down and accomplish a task!

All in all it has been a great few weeks filled with the achievement of milestones. As we begin the year, we (parents) need to get serious about our preschool shopping and consider the options out there.

So here's to an exciting year of learning ahead of us! Cheers!

"Home"made Holiday project

Yes, as the time (and date) stamp on this post shows, it has been practically two months since my last post. Such a sad showing for a blog. So much has happened in the last two months that well, I actually fail to recall at this point, what those happenings were. Ah, my terrible memory strikes again.

So with Christmas 9 days away, am about 98% done with my shopping. That is an all-time record in being early for me, since I tend to cram and complete my shopping around the 23rd. This year, I ended up not buying any Christmas wrapping paper though (well, not exactly...). The 2 sources of this year's wrapping paper are:

(1) Leftover wrapping paper from last Christmas; and
(2) Nico's dozens of art work on flip chart paper from school -- which I have made into wrapping paper.

Initially I started to collect the artwork, not able to bear throwing these precious things away. But with the weekly (and sometimes, more than once a week) collection of painted papers piling high on the buffet table, I decided to take photos of the art and considered disposing of them instead.

Luckily, I came across the blog of a homeschooling mother involving her child in painting on kraft paper - creating their holiday wrapping paper. 'What a great idea!', I thought. And off I ran to buy some red, green and gold paint - along with a HUGE roll of kraft paper, with aspirations of getting my son to create our wrapping paper this year.

Ah, how foolish Mommy was to believe he would actually be interested in such activity! Behold, he agreed to paint (a section of) the kraft paper twice. And so - I decided to recycle his art from school -- after all, he had created these as well.

They turned out very nice too! :) Happy Holidays from mine to yours!



p.s. Anyone in need of craft paper and paints?

Update as of 1Jan2012: Nico eventually got interested in painting on the kraft paper, and I had a good amount of homemade wrapping paper that I used for Christmas. Hooray!