She's 5!

Rhianna turned 5 on Mother's day..So mom didn't get to rest on that day.Rhianna was busy planning her party at least a month before the actual date.She browsed the internet with me and selected the cakes that she liked for her two parties- at home and at school.She invited her friends from day care, prepared the goodie bags and made thank you cards which we will send out to our guests.This was the first time that she actively participated in her parties preparation.

For home party,we decided to have it at our apartment's swimming pool and we invited the neighbours' children and our friends.Luckily we prepared plenty of food as the children were pretty hungry after swimming.A couple of friends brought cakes so we ended up with more cakes than we could eat.It was lovely to see how many good friends turned up.It reminded me of how much Rhianna is cherished by others as well.

Cake 1 - A princess crown cake,selected by Rhianna.It was pretty and tasted surprisingly very good 

Cake 2 - A jelly cake lovingly made by one of our friends.Cooling and refreshing.

Cake 3 - A chocolate cake brought by a good friend of ours.This one was adults' favourite!

Barbie cupcakes by another friend. Rhianna loved them!

The children enjoying their cakes after a good swim

Kids having fun in the pool

The birthday girl's goofy face

So many cakes to choose from.She ended up eating too much cakes for the next 2 days

Checking out the mountain of gifts from our wonderful friends later in the evening

Checking out her new bike before bedtime.See the "I'm tired but I don't want to go to bed" look?

This is from her party at school on Monday.Great effort from the teachers and all the children had fun!

In the end, Miss R had tremendous fun with her friends on her birthday.It is wonderful to see that she is making friends everywhere and she actually enjoys spending time with them.
It is bittersweet watching her grow and watching her develop her personality.She's growing more and more confident and she's coming up with new ideas everyday.I'm grateful for all that she's learned and for her amazing progress...I just wish that she would remain my baby a bit longer.

Recent trip and (not much) photos

So we went to Langkawi Island to spend some times with our family.Rhianna had a blast with all the activities but what she enjoyed most was spending time with her cousins,aunts and uncles and grandparents.
We stayed at Four Point by Sheraton hotel.We loved the hotel.The room was beautiful and enormous and the view was great.

Our balcony view

We went on a boat for mangrove tour and eagle feeding session.We were supposed to go island hopping to the small beautiful surrounding islands but the weather was not very cooperative so we decided to skip the trip.I was actually hoping that we could go fishing ( the last time we did it, we caught a big barracuda )
but we figured safety first since we had children and seniors on the boat (sorry dad!).

Enjoying the mangrove tour

The eagles coming down to feed.The locals said that we could see more eagles if we came in the morning.Since it was already in the afternoon,we just saw maybe 10-20 eagles.Pretty amazing sight.

We also visited the Underwater World where they have a lot of exotic fish (no pictures-you should have figured out that I'm not much of a photographer.These photos were taken with the blackberry only).We spent some times at the animal farm where we fed the deers and rabbits.

Rhianna and Lucy the Australian pony.

The animal lover and her bunny friends.The rabbits all had fat bellies when Rhianna had done feeding!

We all had fun in this beautiful island.Rhianna got to do a lot of swimming in the hotel's gigantic pool.The aloksak works great.Rhianna was singing the whole time she was in the pool.It was lovely to see.Her hearing in the pool also makes my work a lot easier.I had to do a lot of bribery and threat to get her out of the pool,remember?

See that look? Know what I mean?

They are family too!

We love our pets.They are troublesome for sure but they are entertaining.I grew up with cats,rabbits,hamsters,turtles and fish and now I think my daughter is following in my foosteps.

Meet rhianna's pets :

This is Sam.He was actually my cat but Rhianna claimed him as her own.He was a fat,grumpy cat with attitude but was always so gentle with her.I thought that he hated her for stealing all the attention ( he was the 'baby' before the real baby came) but I found them sleeping like this one day.So I guess he loved her in his own way or maybe he was trying to reclaim his position as the 'baby' in the family.One could only guess.Sadly,he passed away at the age of 10 of rich cat's disease (diabetes).We still miss him.

Meet Benben.He's the sweetest (though not the brightest) cat ever.After Sam's passing,he became the object of torture for Rhianna.He would let her do anything to him.What I love about Benben is that he is a willing model.Here, he was posing for a book that I made for Rhianna to teach her about preposition.All I need to do is put him somewhere and he'll pose.He's such a good sport (or maybe not very bright).

Agent Scully aka 'the wheel of blades'

She's called Scully because she's smart and nosy.She investigates every moving things and every sound that she hears.She's also good at being invisible (a smart cat will acquire this skill to survive living with an active child)The photo is blurred because she hates people getting too close to her.If you try to cuddle her,she'll turn into 'the wheel of blades' and you might get hurt.She's the only pet that escapes Rhianna's torture.She's smart remember?

This is Spots - the baby eaters.She got the guppies from her playgroup with other CI kids.They were working on pets theme so everybody got to bring back the fish.She has 4 guppies- all named Spots (go figure).I love to watch them but I get stuck with the cleaning as the rightful owner is too young to do so.They are baby eaters seriously.One of the females was super pregnant and one day she was flat but no baby fish was seen anywhere.It disturbed me for days.I have 5 baby guppies from previous breeding though.

Nemo - the demonic fish

She's orange so she's Nemo according to Miss R.Another fish acquired through pets theme,this time from her preschool.And again,I get stuck with cleaning the tank.If you wonder why Nemo is alone,it is because she is super territorial or perhaps demonic.I tried giving her a partner twice but both times she bit the males to death.So alone she is as she prefers to be.

So these are our pets which enrich our lives in so many ways.They provide my daughter with so many language learning directly and indirectly.They teach her to care for animals and the responsibilities of a pet owner.Ok,she is still learning in the second area.

p/s : there was also Kiki the stray cat who adopted us as his family.He was a free spirited cat who later became a victim of hit and run.We still remember him with love.

She's four! (How did that happen??)

So, she turned four on May 13th and we decided to party,party,party! She browsed the net with me and selected the cake that she wanted to bring to preschool.


Well, it's pink with a picture of the princesses (What more can a girl ask for?)



With her preschool friends (yes,they only have that many children in the school and maybe 5 more not in the photo)

 They played games,sang songs,ate the cake and had a lot of fun.When I picked her up,she was very chatty and telling me all about her party not knowing that we had another one waiting for her at the daycare.



Another party after naptime with her daycare friends



With a cupcake of her own choosing


And later in the evening another party with friends and family (I said party,party,party - so we actually had 3 parties)




Cake ordered and sponsored by a friend of mine- totally amazing!



The trio - The only children in our close circle of friends


And finally the unveiling of the mysterious gift that was kept hidden for the past one month.We saw her drooled over this thing in the store and decided to get it for her birthday and also to celebrate the 'birth' of her new 'ear'.She knew this thing is (damn) expensive and didn't even (dare) ask for it.



Behold the Rosebud dollhouse or the Pink House as Rhianna calls it.



Inside view of the Pink house.It has three floors including the attic

 We only got her the bedroom,living room and kitchen furniture so the house is still quite empty.We plan to do some reward system to get her to work more on her new ear and 'earn' more furnitures for her pink house.Hope it will work out and motivate her to do more therapy.See,we never spend money unecessarily.All her toys were carefully selected and geared towards therapy.

So,that's her birthday story.Yes, she was thoroughly spoiled for the day after all you only turned four once!

Home sweet home!

We are home ! Rhianna's recovery is going pretty smoothly despite the lack of mastoid dressing.Apparently good enough for the surgeon to let us go home.We are still on the lookout for any swelling or hematoma but hopefully none will show up.Right now,there's only minimal swelling and the ear is sticking out a bit.It looks kinda funny but normal for any CI surgery.

This time around,her recovery is faster and easier.She didn't vomit at all after surgery.Her appetite was back almost immediately and no nose bleed like before.She is now back to her normal happy self and needs constant reminder not to run or jump too much.(I really don't want to go back to the hospital! )

This is about 5 hours after surgery.She was already playing and watching DVD.She was still wearing her OT gown.No dizziness or balance problem noted.

24 hours after surgery,she's already playing with a new friend.The other girl is waiting to do a spinal tumour removal surgery (my heart goes out to her and her family).Amazingly,both girls will turn four on the same day, May 13th! How cool is that?

At home after finishing a whole ice cream cone.She's pretty pampered at the moment but I dont' think it will last that long.She'll be back on regular diet very soon,trust me.And she's keeping the hospital tag on her wrist because it is PINK.

And again,keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

She's out!

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Rapunzel's hair cut

Rhianna has always had long hair.After she watched the movie Tangled,she insisted that she be called Rapunzel.Recently however,her language developed more.With more language,come more ideas.With more ideas come reasoning ability.All these combined with a stubborn child resulted in a hair cut.

I love her long silky hair.She needs the long hair.Really.She's very active and a bit tomboyish so she needs the long hair to keep some girlish element.Also,I used to braid her hair tightly over the magnet piece to keep them from falling off everytime she went for her OT sessions or to the playground.

For the last few weeks however she started asking me for a hair cut.Reasons being:

1.All her classmates have short hair (except one girl but she didn't mention that,little stinker).
2.Short hair is cute (?)
3.Her name is actually Rhianna not Rapunzel (really?)
4.Everybody she knows has short hair (I'm not so sure about that)

Anybody who knows this child knows that there is no point in arguing with her.
So here are the pictures.

Setting up the length.She wanted short short!Mommy said not too short please!So we compromised on shoulder length

She wanted short bangs too

Posing with her 'cute' short hair

Again at home with her 'cute' short hair.Notice the fake butterfly tattoo on her arms? She's a future diva I told ya!

School's over!

School holiday program is over.I'm sure Rhianna will miss her teachers and friends.I know I will miss sending her in the morning,singing in the car and seeing her grinning face in the afternoon.
She always came back with many new words and songs and of course with many interesting art and craft to show off.

Fruit platter from "the wonder of fruits" week.We made a real fruit platter and she is more willing now to try out new fruits no matter how weird they look like.

Her banana tree - notice the monkey? She was saying a rhyme about monkey and banana tree that she learned in a different class.I'm glad to see that she is generalizing more things that she has learned into daily activities

Silly looking penguin from "the antartica" week.She doesn't even know where Malaysia is but she can point to the antartica on the map.

 

The children made all the ornaments on the tree.It looks beautiful and they enjoyed the activity.

She told me that Teacher 'Posh' painted her face.The teacher's name is NOT Posh so I have no idea why she nicknamed her Posh.Maybe the teacher looks posh in Rhianna's eyes?




So we're now officially on school holidays until next year when the new semester starts.I can't wait to see what the new year will bring for her...until then,I have to find ways to keep her busy and entertained for two loooong weeks.

Not about her speech or language..

Today's post is not about her language or speech or even her hearing..
I was laughing looking at her baby photos and thinking that it would be fun to put some pictures together to see how much she has improved over the years (in the appearance department)

• She definitely didn't have a neck then.A little bit on the bald side with sumo wrestler proportion.

 

• Still pretty much the same here plus posing for the camera with the wide eyed shocked look

• Some improvement seen here.Her hair finally grew longer and oh..there's the neck!

• Definitely more improvement here.She's having the half smile and naughty twinkle in her eyes.The expression that I come to know so well and it usually means trouble!

• The emergence of cheekiness and naughtiness.Looks continue to improve as she starting to tolerate hair accessories.

• Hair continue to grow longer (If I didn't cut her hair she would have become Rapunzel in flesh and blood.).Still have that shocked look when posing for the camera.

• Trying on different "hairstyles".This is how she'd probably look like if she had curly hair. 

 

• This how she looks like now (minus the curly hair!).She has lost most of her baby fat (which makes me so sad).She's not gaining it back no matter how much I feed her..instead she's growing taller and slimmer.

It's amazing and sad how time flies.She's no longer that chubby little creature that only sleeps on my chest.She's now a preschooler always busy with her 'projects' and pretend play.She doesn't always listen to me anymore as she now has teachers who also teach her about many wonderful things.

BUT..she still thinks that mommy is as pretty as a barbie doll...woohoo!