Sunday, 28 September 2008

'...Had busy day...'


Had busy day!....




who's that?















what?
Daniel has been 'on the phone'(my phone) for ages. While he was talking (pretend talking) to whoever he think is, I got the chance to grab the camera. Here are his conversation:
'...swimming...swimming... Justin...Justin mum... pool closed... water park...Justin upset...coffee...
bye,bye,bye...Popo...' then he pressed the button; pressed button again:
'... had busy day! ...(long babble)...Hannah...Bye...'
What Daniel was trying to say was ' We've been swimming with Justin and Justin's Mum. The toddler pool was closed, we went to the water park instead. Justin was a bit scared of the water park and he was upset for that. afterwards we had coffee with Justin and Justin's mum at the swimming pool'
It looks like that Daniel has already understand how to use phone for socialising. He really made me laugh by saying ' I had busy day' I never teach him about this sentence and he must pick up from somewhere and applied in the right context.

Friday, 26 September 2008

23 month old






















Daniel will be a two-years -old in a month time. The nursery has told me that they intended to move Daniel to the toddler room a month ago, but Daniel refused to move up the class as he's been very much attached to the staff in the baby room, they put him in the toddler room for couple of hours each day as trial. however, after a while, Daniel would rush back to the gate in front of the Baby Room shouting the staff's name 'Jade...Jade...get baby...'; '...don't like it...' ; 'I don't like it...'. Jade is the one who always look after him in the baby room. On the mornings of my working days, if I'd mentioned Jade's name , Daniel would quickly go to fetch his shoes and say 'shoe on... shoe on..., jacket on... car...', he would stop dawdling immediately and get ready to go, this is the way I used to speed up the process of getting out the house.
For some reason Daniel still calls himself 'baby', despite of the fact that I keep telling him that 'you are not a baby anymore, you are a big boy now...', he call himself Daniel sometime, but not as often as 'Baby', the other word he used to refer himself include '宝宝' (bao bao), less frequent one '丹丹' (Dan Dan), his Chinese name. Daniel's language development has been so good that he constantly amazed us. He has a very large vocabulary on English, he likes talking about his days, I really enjoy the moments when I come back home from work, Daniel rushes to me telling me all about his days. He would do the same when Terry comes home from work. He says words like 'bulldozer', 'aubergine' or 'elephant' very clearly, which, i think are quite hard for baby to pronounce. The most amazing thing Daniel likes to do is to show off his skill of finishing the sentences in the book. No matter which word we choose to leave blank, He can finish all the sentence in very long story, like Amanda, the Panda, I thought this maybe because he is too familiar with the story. Then, i noticed that some of the new books i have just read to him only for 2 or 3 days he can do the same trick, like the new book Godilock and the three Bears I bought for him last week. And Daniel's interest on Chinese is just picking up, now every night he would require to read Chinese books, his days normally finish in reading Chinese book, and now he demand to watch Winnie the Pooh in Chinese, he used to pretest if I dare to put his DVD in Chinese, and now he would say ' Winnie pooh Chinese... Winnie pooh Chinese...' he can say some Chinese nursery rhythm, like this one
胖胖敲鼓,敲乒乓; 乒乓鼓响,逗胖胖; 胖胖忙着挥动棒棒.

Looking back, it was so silly to worry about that he won't be talking, but I did have this sort of worry and have read a lot about autism, I remembered I've read a rather touching autobiography book about autism titled Daniel isn't talking.

Sunday, 21 September 2008

Harewood House




























It meant to be Autumn now but it was so sunny and warm today.We took Daniel to Harewood House today, which is an hour's drive away. Harewood House was home to the Queen's cousin, the Earl of Harewood, and was built in the mid-18th century. It has a splendid landscaped garden around a small lake and acres of woodland. The terraced garden behind the house reminded me of the The Palace of Versailles in Paris, and now it was turned into a nice terraced Cafe for people to sit there to admire the great view of the lake and the acres of woodland below it. As usual, the first thing we did when we arrived there was sitting in this nice Cafe. Daniel liked the creamy scone. After the coffee we took a walk around the lake along the shady path, which took an hour or so. then we took Daniel to the adventure playground and visited the Penguin House, as the last activity, we visited the Stately home itself, which house the exhibition of 18 century kitchen, the familly's collection of arts etc and the familly's collection of Chinese objects. Throughout 2008, Harewood is celebrating a long standing connection with the arts of China.

In 1988 around 20 sheets of hand painted Chinese wallpaper were found rolled up in the outbuildings of Harewood House. Research showed that the rolls would form a complete scheme, possibly hung in the Chintz Bedroom by Chippendale’s men in December 1769. the wallpaper, described by experts as "possibly the finest example of Chinese wallpaper anywhere in the World" has been painstakingly conserved and hung in the East Bedroom on the State Floor of the House.

Daniel enjoyed the walk, the playground, and the most exciting experience today for him was watching the penguins, he was getting really excited and was literally shouting to everyone with his finger pointed to the penguins ' Penguin...penguin!....' it was not the first time he saw the penguins. He's been to Marwell Zoo couple of times and saw them couple times. The reason he was so excited to see penguins in real today was that he's been hooked on the Pingue DVD recently. For the stately home itself and the exhibition, Daniel said 'I dont like it!' ...he amazed us by saying the whole sentence...