28 month old and Fawell to Dummy

Daniel turned 28 month old last week. There were a few challenges for Daniel in last couple of months and he had overcame them very well.

1) Recovery from holiday - Daniel has done well on this. He recovered from jet-lag very quickly. We backed on Sunday and Daniel was invited to play with Justin at their house on Monday. I thought Daniel would be really tired after 5000 miles travelling and would probably be cranky at Joanne's house. But he got very excited to see Justin. He kept going on about his China trip. Daniel shouted '(I've) been on big... big... aeroplane.... ' with his hand pointing the sky. 'Been Beijing...Been Olympic stadium... seen PO PO...' Also, he was really excited about Justin's new toys. Justin got a new cooker and lots of other new toys following his birthday in January. Tuesday when i dropped him off at nursery, he was fine, didn't cry or whinging, he seemed to go back to routine straightway. In contrast, i felt so tired after coming back from holiday, it took me a week to recover.

2)Farewell to his beloved 'Ga Ga' - 'Ga Ga' is how Daniel call his dummy. We got Daniel completely off his dummy the second week after the holiday. Daniel stopped to use Dummy at nursery since 14-15 month old, but we continuously used it to settle him at night.
I wanted to wean him off dummy a few times in the past but it didn't succeed
Before China trip I've really made the resolution to wean Daniel off the dummy, but Terry said he cant go on a long-haul holiday with Daniel without dummy. Then we waited until we came back from China, one morning when we woke up, Daniel was happily eating his breakfast at his little table, he neatly put his dummy on the table, I said to him ' you are a big boy now, big boy doesn't use dummy, shall we put dummy in the bin...' he nodded ' yes...yes...' Just like that we went cold turkey. Daniel was OK all day during the day until the bed time when he asked for his Ga Ga and I told him 'Mama put dummy in the bin', then there was this ear-splitting scream. We had a-week up and down at nights and Daniel refused me for couple of days as I threw his beloved dummy in the bin. after a week, Daniel's sleep has gone back to normal.

One night last week while driving home after work, I was tuning the radio, then there was the talk about getting baby off dummy, someone phoned in talking about how they got their son off the dummy. He said they got his son off dummy when he was 2.5-3 years old, It was such a big thing, they actually had a little ceremony for his son by the canal before they threw the dummy in the canal. The presenter praised him 'you are really thoughtful!' The radio talk spurred me on writing this. The funny thing was Daniel now started to laugh at his friend at nursery who still uses dummy. One day he came home said ' Bradley is such a baby, he still got Ga Ga on...' Sometime when he saw other baby crying he would say ' baby lost his dummy'.

Tantrum and Discipline

Here comes the moment! the moment that I start to discipline Daniel.

I always believe that the responsiveness of parents towards their baby helps shaping the baby's emerging self-esteem during their early stage of life. There are so many research suggest that leaving an infant crying-out is so wrong, because the baby's brain is still undergoing fast-developing during his first year of life, the neuron cells in baby's brain will form the connections from the primitive part brain to its front lobe (which in charge controlling the emotions) at fast pace during the first year development. Leaving a baby to cry for too long will stop such connection's formation and make it hard for him to regulate his emotions at later life. For this reason, I always responded to Daniel's request very quickly when he was little, which probably taught him that tantruming is the way to get what he wanted. In the past We haven't really tried to discipline Daniel as such, not even naughty chair. But Daniel's tantrum is getting bigger and bigger, there were such moments when Daniel's tantrum would drive my anger sky-high that I found I was shouting to him, then later I became very regret with my outburst, because I knew clearly that shouting and scream wont work, it's just your primative reaction towards another person's anger/rage, besides shouting will probably just teach him that outburst is the the way to go in such situation. Now that Daniel is 28 month old, I came to realise that I need to keep the balance right, Daniel is probably old enough to respond well to discipline, and discipline doesn't necessarily mean damage as it would do when he was little, I also came to realise that the way I react to Daniel's tantrum will not help us to steer away from tantrums, it will probably helps to head more for it. We more or less react to Daniel's rage like this: when he whimpered we cajoled, as his anger mounted, we told him we would ignore him- but we didn't. we reasoned, then pleaded, then shouted, just one step before smacking him.

Since we came back from holiday, I started to discipline Daniel using the Cool Down technique combined with positive reinforcement. Basically, whenever he starts tantrum, I make my expectation clearly, eg. I say 'Mummy don't like you screaming, then I would withdraw attention completely (strictly no response) no matter how hard he screams. I found this works better than Time Out. With Time Out we put Daniel on naughty step, because Daniel can't physically sit there for required minutes, I had to go back to put him back on the step, which actually gave him the attention. Also, I now start to tell him how pleased I am when he doesn't throw a tantrum as a form of positive reinforcement. Now Daniel behaves a lot better. i am using Daniel's own word: ' I'm really a good cub today!' as the finishing words for this entry.

Park and Ride

We took Daniel to York for bus ride on Sunday.

We don't go York that often as we do to Leeds and Manchester though we are probably at similar distance to these three cities in the north, we tend to go Manchester and Leeds more often. York, Once the Roman capital of Northern England, is full of tourists all year round. The reason to take Daniel to York is for its Hop-on and Hop-off bus ride. ( Daniel's obsession with bus hasn't gone yet). However, while we were driving to York on A64, Terry suggested to change plan to Park and Ride when we saw this sign for York popping into horizon. I agreed immediately, why not? It would be a better plan than the original one. Daniel wouldn't mind it's a double-Decker open-top bus or a normal bus, as long as it's a bus. And the Park and Ride would save £13 parking ticket in York city center. The return ticket for park and ride only cost £2.3o each and it's a relative 'long' bus ride for Daniel (opposing to the normal bus ride I take him from our local town center to our house), the hop-on and hop-off bus ticket would cost twenty-something pounds. We took the bus No.3 white line from Akham bar to York city center. York is full of restaurant's, pub and bars. Terry and me visited here for romantic weekend when we still lived down south. Yesterday there was a continental market in York, so we ended up eating too much snacks at the market. We had Turkish chicken / lamb wraps. Daniel had French Pain De Raisin and Dutch pancake. I don't normally like Continental market, but the one in York was nice. Shops in York are all scattered around its medieval, cobbled street, so browsing through all these shops is a bit different from browsing through other high streets in any other Major cities/towns. It felt nice! We all think we should come to York more often, maybe book hotel for weekend sometime...
Daniel certainly enjoyed the day when we got the return bus back to the car park, he kept waving to bus shouting' bye... bye... bus...'

Daniel's First Visit to Beijing

We left Kunming on 29th Jan for Beijing and spent the last 3 days of holiday there before returning Britain. It was only the Forth day of the Chinese New Year, my parents and my sister and her husband were all in airport to see us off, I felt a bit sad that the visit was so short, i felt that I don't want to leave this place, but somehow we all got used to this scene every year.

The flight was 13.oopm and we arrived at Beijing airport around 16.00pm. We took taxi to Wang Fu Jing. Terry booked the WangFuJing Grand Hotel online while staying my parent's house. He tried to book the one where we stayed several years ago but we both couldn't remember the name of the hotel. So he booked this five-star one at the heart of the Wang Fu Jing. Daniel was quite excited about hotel, he likes to jump up and down the king-sized double bed and play his toy on the chair. He put the Please-Don't-Disturb label on the door on his wrist and pretended it's his handbag and he was doing shopping. It was cold in Beijing, but we are lucky just to avoid the -14 C temperature a few days ago. It was -5C when we were there. It didn't feel that cold. We went out for meal every evening in WangFuJing. We were all excited about the food choices that WangFuJing offers, in particular, Both Terry and Daniel likes Yoshinoya Japanese Restaurant and Hanna Shan Korean one. They also likes the Food Republic inside the Xin Dong Fang Guang Chang.

We took Daniel to Forbidden City one day and the Olympic Stadium the other day, but he wouldn't interest them that much.

Daniel likes staying hotel so much that when we landed at Heathrow and put him in car, he said he wanted to go hotel, ' donut want to go home... don't want to go home...' I think, Hotel for him probably mean staying late, that's why he likes it.

Chinese New Year - Kunming 2

Hai geng Da Ba


Peddling Pool for kids on NanPing street

Looks like a moody tanager (in the communal garden at POPO's place)


(nationalities village)

Daniel quite like my parent's new apartment. He probably doesn't have any memory about my parents' old place where he has been when he was 6 months old. He call PO PO's balconies as PO PO's garden, my mum has a few plants in the balcony. He ate his breakfast there in the morning as it was very sunny there. Also he likes to watch people practising the drag dance in the neighbouring school. He also likes play the staircase in the lounge by pretending he's getting on the bus then sitting on the bus. I had to watch him all the time. My parents specially installed a stair gate at top floor before we arrived, however, due to its open plan nature, they cant do one at the bottom.

Gong Gong, Po Po and Xiao Yi (my sister) really want to shower Daniel with love, they have been waited, waited for over the whole year... but Daniel wouldn't cooperate apart from the first day, the rest of days, it all depends on his mood. he wouldn't let them to cuddle him if he wasn't in the mood. But he certainly understood they are all his relatives and they love him, for example, when just my mum, me and Daniel went out, if i said 'Mummy cannot carry you anymore', he would say' Po Po carry Daniel', Daniel received lots of 压岁钱 in the red envelopes at Chinese New Year Day, he held them all in his hands and thought they were all Bus tickets. We went to my Aunt's place for dinner on the Second Day of Chinese New Year, my aunt gave Daniel a pair of socks she knitted for him, Daniel quite like that, he now wear them like a pair of slippers in our house and he called it 'GU PO PO socks'.

Daniel picked up Chinese very quickly when he was in China. After one or twice getting in and out the lift to my parents' apartment, he can say '门要开了， 门要关了'. he copied what people said very clearly and quickly but on top of that, he would put English phrase ' I don't like...', e.g. my mum said ' 来，婆婆亲亲' , Daniel would say ' Don't like 来，婆婆亲亲'... Daniel used the 'Don't like' so frequently that we called him 'Mr. Don't-like' at one point.

After two-week Kunmingnese, Daniel and Terry fancied western foods, so we went to Blue Bird for Pizza, which made Daniel quite excited. He jumped up and downs. The pizza there costs RMB68 Yuan for a medium sized, virtually the same price as the one in the UK. The taste of Pizza are nice!

Chinese New Year - Kunming

My Dad has already been waiting at the airport for us for a while when we arrived Kunming as the flight had been delayed. When we met, I told Daniel to call 'Gong Gong' and Daniel surprisingly obeyed my 'order', he said 'Gong Gong' and didn't struggle off when my Dad try to cuddle him, it's a pleasant surprise for me. Daniel called my mum Po Po as well when he saw her. Also the following day he even want my mum to carry him. It was such a shame that we couldnt stay in Kunming longer than i would like to,

My parent has moved to a new apartment which has two floors since we were in Kunming last time. The tiled lounge and balcony was a bit novelty for Daniel. It was cold when we got there, my Dad especially went out to buy an extra rug to put on top the tiled floor for Daniel to play on.

Daniel was so excited with the buses in Kunming that he demanded to go on the bus every morning when we woke up and we did. It was like a Bus Holiday. We went everywhere by buses. Lucky the bus service in Kunming is so convenient and efficient nowadays, to some extent it's better than driving.

Food wise, my mum was bit worried about what she was going to give Daniel to eat before we arrived, but Daniel was just doing fine. He was OK eating soup rice noodles for breakfast, he called it 'Noodles in gravy', he also likes 饵块. Eating-out was a bit problem as most restaurants foods in Kunming is very spicy, but somehow Daniel liked going out for dinner...