讲华语

One of the things we were most worried about when we moved back to Singapore was Sophie's (in)ability to pick up Chinese. Jude and I speak the language well enough I suppose but it doesn't come naturally to us, which means between just talking to Sophie in English and having to first translate whatever we want to say in Chinese in our heads before then saying it to her, we've always taken the easy way out. Also, people say your mother tongue is the language in which you dream and my dreams have never been in any other language but English (can you subtitle a dream? Freud? Christopher Nolan?).

But thankfully, Sophie's preschool has an excellent Chinese language programme (into which they're constantly researching and re-evaluating, which makes the education geek in me so happy). She also has great Chinese teachers who have been the paragon of patience when it comes to exposing Sophie to the language. They understand that she had almost zero exposure to the language before her third birthday and are taking things slow with her; but they also practice the principle that the only way to learn a language *is* to be saturated in it and so they speak to her almost exclusively in Chinese, necessitating that she learns to understand what they're saying to her.

Sophie's been a quick learner of the sounds of the language-- she can repeat phrases and even complete songs almost pitch perfectly. But for a long time, she had no idea what they mean. A month ago though, she started asking me what certain words in Chinese mean, words she hears often in school or that appear in stories that are read to her- 蝴蝶 (butterfly), 一起 (together), 朋友 (friend), for example and I was more than happy to translate them for her and then ask her again the next day to see if she remembers. Sometimes she does, often she doesn't, but the fact is that she's interested and that's more than we can ask for.

Then last week, her Chinese teacher tells me that they're starting to teach the kids how to recognize Chinese characters and sent home a little game for us to play with Sophie (her first homework assignment!!). She didn't yet have to be able to identify each word but the objective was just to familiarize her with them. Basically, we were supposed to place four Chinese characters on a grid and systematically take one away in turn, and see if Sophie can identify the one that's missing. The four words were:
口 (mouth)
人 (people)
小 (small)
大 (big)

Since Chinese characters are fundamentally pictograms, I told Sophie to look at the words and pretend that they're pictures-- the character for "mouth" looks like a mouth open wide, "people" is a person walking, "small" is like a small, skinny person standing straight, and "big" is a bigger person standing with his/her arms and legs stretched open. And it went BRILLIANTLY. I almost couldn't believe it. In 10 minutes, our child who until 6 months ago heard no word of Chinese (except on Ni-Hao Kai Lan on Nick Jr.) could not only pick out the right word when prompted, she could also produce the sound when I asked. I thought my heart would burst from sheer pride.



Jude and I take hope from this NYT article which we talk about all the time to our friends in similar situations, with children learning what is essentially for Sophie, a foreign language. It talks about how a foreign correspondent for the NYT basically transplanted his entire family from Brooklyn, NY to Moscow and enrolled his children in a Russian-only elementary school. The kids had to learn everything in Russian, a language they had never heard before. It was pure torture. But after five years in Moscow, the children not only spoke fluent, flawless Russian, but also developed a deep love and appreciation for the Russian life and culture. We can only hope the same for Sophie...

Hammy

Sophie's class at daycare has a pet hamster affectionately and imaginatively named Hammy. The kids take turn to care of it on weekends and this past weekend was Sophie's turn. It happened to be a long weekend so we got to spend an extra day with Hammy so that was nice :)

Being so gentle with Hammy

I have to admit that Jude and I were initially a little trepidatious that something might happen to Hammy while in our care. I can't even keep a cactus alive so you can imagine our anxiety at a real life scampering creature that has actual needs. But Sophie was a most committed caregiver and made sure Hammy got its seeds, fresh water, and change of shower sand every morning.

Taking her responsibility very seriously

She was very very gentle with it and would find every opportunity to run by its cage and give us an update of what Hammy's up to (which usually wasn't very much in the day- it's a more "run around his wheel at 12 in the morning kind of hamster...)- "Look Mama, his eyes are open!"; "Hammy is burrowing under the sawdust!"; "I think Hammy's stinky. He's giving himself a bath."; "Dada, Hammy's running in his gym!"

Laughing at Hammy's antics

There were also many quiet moments when Sophie was content to just sit and watch Hammy, whether it was doing anything or not. I wondered what was going through that little brain of hers as she contemplated this living creature so much smaller than she is.

Just watching...

She was sad to bring Hammy back to school today, but at least she'll still get to see it everyday. It was a wonderful experience for all of us, particularly for Sophie who did such a great job.

Such a good caregiver

Even though Hammy was by no means a demanding animal to care for, Sophie still learned about what it means to take care of a pet, that it's not all fun and cuddles and that it has needs that must be met first. We talked about how different Hammy is from us (he doesn't shower with water, doesn't drink from a cup, and only eats seeds), but also how alike many living creatures are (we both need water and food, and have the same desire to be clean).

Also, we now we know we can ostensibly own a pet and not run the risk of accidentally "misplacing" it... ;)

More pictures here.

讲华语**

One of the things we worry about with Sophie being in daycare in Singapore is the whole speaking Chinese situation. Until we moved back, Sophie almost never heard any Chinese spoken around her. We taught her the Chinese words for "soy milk", "grape", and "apple", and that was about it.

But now that we're home, she hears it everywhere-- when we're at the store, at a restaurant, on TV at the grandparents' (we don't have TV signal in our apartment yet), and most importantly, at school.

But thankfully, she's actually been keenly enthusiastic about the language. She constantly asks what the name of things are in Chinese and she's been surprisingly receptive to us reading her Chinese books at bedtime (with us translating the story line by line in English, of course). In fact, right now, she's particularly enamored with the Tao Shu books that we borrowed from the cousins. We only have two from the series and we've read them almost every other day :) Honestly, it's actually been interesting for me to rediscover my mother tongue as well- I think the last time I was asked to read anything in Chinese was when I was 17!

It helps too that Sophie's favorite teacher at school is also her Chinese teacher. It's fascinating how children form attachments and particularly so in this case when Sophie barely understands what her Chinese teacher says to her. Her teacher will sometimes speak to Sophie in English if it's an important instruction, but for the most part, she only speaks Chinese. We suspect part of it is precisely because she speaks primarily Chinese. We think that for Sophie, Chinese is like a new puzzle- her curiosity and interest are being piqued and it's something to be explored and discovered. And her Chinese teacher represents all of that in one adoring, affectionate package.

Watch as Sophie sings her first Chinese song :) She has no idea what the words mean individually but she's actually got the intonations down quite accurately.




**speak Chinese

Field of dreams

Here's a thought experiment- think of something you really really love. Like really. Got that? Now imagine a roomful of it. You following? Okay, now imagine entire museum halls filled with nothing but life-size manifestations (albeit in skeletal form) of this object of love. Throw in a generous helping of pure toddler wonder and awe, and what you have is Sophie Yew at Chicago's absolutely brilliant Field Museum of Natural History.

It's quite something to be in the presence of 500-million years of evolutionary history- forces you to put your life in perspective a little and it's oddly humbling and inspiring both at the same time... Since nothing I write can describe the magnificence of the museum or how enthralled all three of us were by the exhibits, here are some photos instead:

"Woah, Mama..."

In front of Sue, the largest and most complete (80%)
Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton currently known. She is
67 million years old.

Sophie's favorite pterodactyl that she spotted the moment
we entered the Main Hall.

Sitting inside a dinosaur footprint :)

The Artic (no, that's not a typo...)

Talking with Sophie about Chagall's America Windows

It was one of those very special moments that I wanted to bottle up and preserve forever. Sophie will likely not have any memory of it when she grows up but I always will. And I will remind her of it as she gets older, that we once stood together in front of Chagall's America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ever since I saw it in person in 2004, America Windows has been one of my favorite pieces of (public) art ever. I've always been a Chagall fan and have seen a few of his original artwork, but nothing quite prepares you for the stunning magnificence that is America Windows. Calling it stained glass is like calling the Taj Mahal a house- it's so much more than that. I only managed to see it twice before it was removed for restoration in 2005. It took 5 years of intensive conservation treatment and archival research before the windows returned in 2010 as the stunning centerpiece of a new presentation at the east end of the museum’s new wing. And the moment we walked into the Art Institute yesterday, I made a beeline straight to it with Sophie in tow.

And it took my breath away. Again. Sparkling, shimmering, glowing. I asked Sophie what she saw in the windows, which sections she liked, and I told her why it's one of my favorite pieces of art. It wasn't like I gave her a crash course in art history or anything- we just talked about the windows like we would talk about a picture in one of her storybooks- the colors, the "characters", what we thought was going on, how the images made us feel, etc.

In fact, that's how we spent the next hour or so at the Art Institute. Visiting the Art Institute was one of the first things we've done with Sophie that was more for Jude and I than it was for her. Usually, on our vacations, we'd stick to things Sophie enjoys-- the children's museum, the aquarium, parks, etc. But this time, we wanted to go to the Art Institute and we took it as an opportunity to share with her something we love.

And it turned out to be really fun. And funny. Trust almost-three year olds to be the harshest art critics. The Art Institute was having a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective which was great- we thought Sophie might enjoy Pop Art a little more than say, the Impressionists. Sophie had very honest-- and VOCAL-- opinions about several of the pieces that caught her eye. "Why is the lady not wearing a diaper?", she asked, as we stood in front of Frolic (which prompted the woman next to us to say, "You must write this down in her baby book- how precious!"); "Oooh... I like hotdog. But I like it with ketchup, not mustard." (Hot Dog with Mustard); "I like some spaghetti too!" (Ball of Twine); and my favorite, "Why is the lady crying? Maybe she's in the shower. I think she has shampoo in her eyes." (Drowning Girl). Like I said, it was loud and hilarious :)

We had a wonderful time even though we obviously didn't visit all the exhibits. We're actually looking forward to some local and regional art when we move back to Singapore. Jude and I really enjoyed the National Museum of Singapore after it reopened a while back and I have a feeling Sophie might too. Here's to more museums to discover and explore together!

Toddler problem solving

The problem that Sophie and her friend, Conor, encountered at daycare today:
How to get onto the tire swing all by themselves? (because clearly, toddlers are fully independent creatures who require no assistance from anyone)

Solution:
1) Work together
2) Find crate to prop themselves up
3) Realize that said crate is too high to get up as well
4) Gather more crates and build a row of them to the slide so that the slide handle can be used as an assist up the crates



Honestly, when their teachers told us what Sophie and Conor had done, we could barely believe it; but when we saw the structure for ourselves and also how proud the two of them were of their accomplishment, that incredulity turned into a profound sense of pride :) According to the teachers, they worked really hard at it and it took them a while to put everything together all by themselves. Apart from being so very very proud of her ingenuity and thoughtfulness, we also appreciate that the teachers allowed them to explore their own solution without 1) stopping them from "making a mess" or 2) solving the problem for them.

Oh, and even better, Sophie managed to do it all without losing her balance or her hat! :)

S for Sophie

It all started when we received this adorable personalized plate in the mail last week- a surprise present from my sister, Sherri, which has gotten Sophie really excited about mealtimes ever since :) It not only has her name on it, the picture of the little girl with two ponytails looks a little like her too, which of course, thrills Sophie to no end. She's been wanting to eat everything off that plate, including noodle soup and I had to tell her no, but place a couple pieces of popcorn on it just to placate her.

"This is my S for Sophie plate!"

The other thing the plate has inspired is an interest in the alphabet. When I told Sophie that the word on the plate spells "Sophie," she asked, "What else the letters say?" which got me really excited :) She was showing an interest in reading and learning her letters and I was more than happy to jump in! I explained to her that 'S' is Sophie's special letter because that's the first letter of her name.

Now, it's the one letter she can confidently identify- "S for Sophie!" she would shout, whenever she sees the letter. Like when we were walking towards our neighbourhood grocery store, Busch's yesterday- Sophie saw the two large 'S's on the sign and practically yelled to the entire parking lot- "Two 'S's for Sophie! There are two 'S's for Sophie!" Or when we were reading the book, Spring is Here: A Story About Seeds that she got from school- she was almost delirious with joy :) I think it helps that she thinks the letter looks like a snake and a worm so it's easy for her to remember. We also put a star sticker on the 'S' of a used keyboard she plays with so she easily identifies it whenever she "send(s) Gong Gong (my dad) an email"...

So far, apart from 'S', she can often also identify 'O' and 'P'- 'O' simply because once you mimic the shape with your mouth, it's a pretty easy one, and 'P' because I told her 'P' is for Payton, her best friend at school. I also said 'P' looks like a magnifying glass (I mean, it sort of does, no?) so that helps her a little too. These days, whenever we look at the title of whatever book we're reading, I'll ask her to find 'S', 'O', and 'P'. It's been a fun little game and I'm hoping it helps her slowly learn the other letters of her name. I'm in no hurry for her to grasp the entire alphabet-- she'll get there eventually-- but I think it's been quite the special thing for her to understand that these disparate symbols come together to spell her name.

All this, because of a plate. Thanks, 姨姨二二＊!

＊This is what Sophie calls my sister, Sherri: 姨(aunt); 二(two/second)

Backseat driver

It's been tricky business driving with Sophie in the car these days. Don't get me wrong, she's the model passenger- she never makes "helpful" comments about my driving skills, she doesn't tell me which route she prefers to take, and she always keeps her hands inside the moving vehicle (being strapped into a car seat helps..). What makes driving difficult with her around is how hard she's been making me laugh with the things she says. It's not that they're particularly funny, but taken in the context of when and how she's saying them, plus the realization that she's picking up so much language just from listening to us, it's just been sheer delight!

[To everyone whizzing by us in their bike, whether or not they're wearing a helmet] Where's your helmet?!!

Firetruck, you hungry? Want some bunny crackers? It's tasty!

It's windy, Mama. Trees waving at Sophie.

Where's sun hiding? There he is! Hiding the clouds.

This our car. Our car is good.

Mama no criss-cross applesauce. Mama is driving.

[To joggers she happens to see along the sidewalk] Have a good jogging!

And my favorite thus far:
[As we turned into our parking lot and I told her we had arrived home] Good job, Mama! Good job!

Of course, in 12 years (or less) when she's burning through her college tuition in phone bills (or whatever form of communication her father and I are going to have to pay for), someone reading this right now will surely remind me that there once was a time when I was proud of and celebrated her chattiness...

How a 19-month old blew my mind on the sidewalk

Dear World,
Let it be known, Sophie knows her alphabet.

Ok, that's all.

-Us



[By the time I got over myself and whipped my phone out, she'd reached G...]

The birth of a word

If you have or know a child under the age of three, you must watch this video.

Coming out of the Media Lab at MIT this is an astounding study of how children learn words- what the role of the caregiver and context is, and how we can visualize that information. As a parent and early childhood researcher, this blew my mind. Since Sophie spoke her first word, I've been keeping a record of each word that has come after and the approximate date of its acquisition. Call me obsessive, but like I tell Jude, "It's data!" How else would I know that what was "ta-too" in September last year finally evolved into "crackers" two weeks ago. But this study takes that obsessiveness to a whole other level, with 140 000 hours of audio and video data. The visualization of the data is stunning but more importantly, what Deb Roy presents in this video barely scrapes the surface of what the study can potentially tell us about children's vocabulary acquisition and what we can do to support their learning. There's still so much we don't know about how children pick words up- learning how to speak is a natural and instinctual process but it is also one that is profoundly complex and mysterious.

I'll let the video speak for itself. Really, watch it, and feel yourself tingle when you hear how "gaa gaa" evolves into "water".

Lunch epiphany

At lunch today, we taught Sophie that instead of eating her minestrone soup and bread separately, it is entirely acceptable to dunk her bread into the soup first as another soup-delivery mechanism. Let's just say that was the last we saw of the spoon this afternoon.



You may count her mind as officially blown...



Lip-smackingly good :)



After Dunk #2:



And the final verdict?


"Awe-suum!"

Day at the museum

1. Excited flapping hands :), 2. How big a mastodons leg is, 3. "Row, row, row...", 4. Kneeling for a better look at the wild-life dioramas. , 5. Dada showing here where on the globe we are, 6. Sophie wanted to touch the owl badly

I don't know what took us so long to finally make our way to the Exhibit Museum of Natural History which is right on central campus and a ten minute drive from us. I guess we thought Sophie wasn't big enough to appreciate the exhibits. But oh is she ready now...

Ever since downloading all the various Night and Day Studio apps for the iPhone/iPad, Sophie has come to know her animals very well. She can pick them out in a group, name them, and most of the time, imitate the sound they make. Add to that her odd penchant for dinosaurs (it started with an episode of Harold and the Purple Crayon...) and you have an 18-month old who was raring to go when we told her we were going to the museum to see dinosaurs and animals. All the way to the museum, she kept saying "dinosauce, dinosauce" (that's how her dinosaurs comes out) over and over... until we actually walked into the dinosaur exhibit area where she promptly clammed up, grabbed our hands, and refused to let go for the longest time. See, the thing is, methinks our daughter likes the idea of animals; it's an exciting notion, conceptually. But bring her anywhere near them (or in this case, their skeletons or a stuffed version of them) and she gets a little nervous... For all her hellion bravado, she's a little scaredy cat inside :)

She did eventually warm up though and had just a fantastic time scuttering from one exhibit to the next. She was enthralled by the large dinosaur displays but was probably still a little intimidated by them to appreciate their spectacular majesty (truly, they were awesome...). But she absolutely loved the wildlife dioramas-- from squirrels to ducks, rabbits to owls-- she wanted to look at each and every one (and touch them too of course, failing which, kissing the glass panels was the next best thing).

Sophie's not going to remember much of what we did today-- not in the long run any way-- but we'd like to think that we gave her something to see, think and talk about today and maybe tomorrow. And for an 18-month old, that's probably more than we can ask for.

[Rest of photos here.]

Use your words

So it was like any other evening, driving home after picking Sophie up from daycare. I was singing "Wheels on the Bus" (which she's been making us sing over and over again these past few days) when I pulled into our parking lot. And then it happened.

Sophie said "home".

And when I stopped the car and opened the door to take her out, she said "light" and pointed to the light in the car as it came on. I thought they were both flukes but as we were walked towards the house, Sophie pointed to our door and said "Mama, home" and "light", now pointing to the light at our doorway. OK, so not flukes.

I started keeping a list of words that Sophie knows (and can say) and at 16-months exactly today, it's like I'm adding new words everyday. It's a conservative list-- or at least I'm trying to make sure it is so I don't inflate her vocabulary-- i.e. these are words we know for a fact she can say and have heard her repeat enough times and in the right context to show that she knows the meaning of.

Dada
Mama
hi
bye
water
Elmo
doh-doh (doll)
ball
flower
dog + oo oo! to distinguish it from...
duck
more
milk
walk
book
read
hold
no
night night
bah-bah (抱抱 ("bao bao", which is "carry" or "embrace" in Chinese)
baby
ah-pool (apple)
see you
tan-tyou (thank you)
yiyi (what she calls my sisters)
I woo oo (I love you)
pea (please)
bock (block)
pee-a-boo (peek-a-boo)
hah-lo (hello)
ah-den (all done)
hat
told (cold)
pah (puff)
sit
watch
tow (throw)
shoe
light
home

And these are just examples of her expressive vocabulary- I'm assuming her receptive vocabulary (words she understands but can't produce) is also growing day by day. It's such a delight hearing her talk-- both the real words and the rest of her jabbering that's just as wonderful. It's almost like communicating with a real person now- she can tell us what she wants, what she doesn't, when she wants more of something, when she's done with what she's doing, and most importantly, she's also using words (and gestures) to show emotion, like joy, love, anger.

Of course, we don't understand everything that Sophie says but we try our hardest to take the time to watch, listen, and respond to her regardless. I think it makes her feel like she's a good communicator and reinforces her self esteem by letting her know that she's worth listening and paying attention to.

I'm calling it

sen·tence, noun \ˈsen-tənz\
a word, clause, or phrase or a group of clauses or phrases forming a syntactic unit which expresses an assertion, a question, a command, a wish, an exclamation, or the performance of an action.

"Hi Dada!"

"More, Mama..."

"More milk."

I don't care if it's just two words, Sophie's speaking in sentences, and that's that.

More please

Jude and I were lying in bed just chatting about Sophie when he made a comment about how she no longer cries when she's hungry. I thought about it a little and realized why- she's almost never hungry. These days, whenever she wants food, she just signs for it. It's something we've really come to appreciate even though according to ASL (American Sign Language), she's technically signing "again". But honestly, as long as it helps her communicate to us what she wants, I could care less. It helps too that she can articulate "more" although she never says it without also signing at the same time.

You should see her asking for more crackers when she's in her carseat and I'm driving; since there's no way for me to give her any (and she doesn't understand that), she ends up signing so insistently and jabbing her palm so hard I'm sure she's going to hurt her finger one day.

Watch out...

We're letting Sophie loose into the world!



Today, the neighborhood... tomorrow, the world!

Sophie's new wheels

Since she started walking with our help, we've been looking around for a walker wagon for Sophie to push around the house. There are of course plenty of these activity wagons around but the ones we've seen are either really poorly made or have too many bells and whistles that distract more than they engage. And with the Fisher-Price recall of close to 10 million toys recently, we're glad we didn't get any of the FP ones that the folks online recommended. Our first choice was actually this Haba walker that we first saw in a toy store a couple of months back. We love Haba toys-- like Chicky and her first rattle-- but we just couldn't bring ourselves to pay $150 for something she'll probably outgrow in less than a year.

Then today, we found the perfect one- the Original Toy Company Baby Walker. It's just the right height for Sophie- sturdy, simple, thoughtfully designed in all the right places, and it has great reviews on Amazon. And at a price that we could live with. It's strong enough that it won't topple when she tries to pull herself up on it, and she can not only put her toys in the wagon, we can even put her in it and push her around. Needless to say, the afternoon was spent traversing the length of our second floor, back and forth, back and forth. She's so enamored with it that we wondered why we didn't her one sooner. When the weather gets a little nicer tomorrow, we'll bring her outside and see how far she can go with it by herself :)

Remember the last time you learned to do something new all by yourself?

And remember how proud you were when you did? You probably looked a little like this :)

[Sophie uses a fork by herself for the first time.]

Step by step

A week before her first birthday, Sophie decides she's ready to explore the world by foot. At least by holding our hands first.

Which is how I hope she'll begin all of her life's adventures...

Don't ask me where she learned to be such a show-off

I think I'm going to always be this hysterical at each of Sophie's milestones; I was when she first sat up on her own, first used her pincer grasp properly, first started crawling, and first stood up. And this morning, when she showed us that her ability to stand unassisted is officially a conscious and repeatable skill (as opposed to a "hmm... what would happen if I just did this?" fluke), I was squealing like a harpy. Again. Trust me, it'll happen again when she starts walking, at her first word, on her first day of school, her first pimple- I could go on...

And where did she learn to be such a show-off? I will never know. It's like she thrives on the attention and applause. Like Tinkerbell- "Clap! Clap if you believe!"