My Big Boy

I want to quickly record these recent developments, as they've been occurring so quickly it's like sand slipping through my fingers.

Kai's able to discriminate the two languages spoken in our home and, as he's now able to recognize the people in his life, he knows my mom speaks a different language from everyone else (see Roots of Bilingualism). So the first time he heard Mommy speaking Mandarin and grandma wasn't here, he was totally confused. He stopped and just stared at me with that stunned "This is the mommy unit. I know that. But why does she sound like grandma?" look. Even though now he knows Mommy switches back and forth, he's still not used to hearing Mandarin when I talk to him. He's usually surprised for a second. Then he smiles, as if saying, "Oh yeah! I forgot you can speak that language too. Okay. Carry on."

Just in the last two weeks, he's become even more vocal. Though he hasn't been trying out many consonant-vowel combination, it's not uncommon with bilingual babies as they learn differently from monolingual babies (see babies learn words). We've also learned decipher the different sounds he makes. He "heh"s when he's happy or proud; he "ay"s when he's upset or annoyed. The high-pitched nasalized "huh-huh-huh" signals "I'm sleepy/hungry", while the continuous "huh-huh-huh" at a normal pitch usually means he's singing along with "The Doggie That Sings the ABCs". When I leave him in bed with Daddy in the morning, he goes "Eh! Eh!" and looks up to see if Daddy's waking up. If Daddy's eyes are still closed, he plays by himself for a little while and tries again. "Eh! Eh!" sounds like he's saying, "Dad! Dad!"

As a side note, I've been singing to Kai children's songs in English, Mandarin, and Japanese (I threw Japanese in just to see what would happen), and interestingly, his favorite songs are itsy-bitsy spider (cause he gets tickled) and the theme song of the Japanese cartoon "Doraemon".

With a little encouragement from his girlfriend, Kai's been eating solids (Heh heh, I just want to try it out to see how it sounds. I may get an earful 16 years from now about what a dork I am, but I don't care. I'll deal with it then). He has carrots for breakfast and bananas for dinner. He prefers carrots with rice cereal and breast milk and bananas as-is. Yesterday I made him some apple sauce with the big yummy (and expensive cause this is not apple season) Fuji apples we got from the market. While I was stirring the chopped apples, a mosquito was hovering around. It was really annoying, but I was unsuccessful at killing the blood sucker while cooking. When it was done, Kai tried a few spoonfuls but was visibly unimpressed with the taste. All of a sudden, he puked everything out (including the breast milk he had had earlier). Caught off guard, I gasped and realized that I had swallowed the mosquito (May this be a lesson to all you mosquitoes: Don't get too close). Now both of us were making that "Eeewwww, YUCK!" face.


And this afternoon, he woke up from a nap and all of a sudden he was able to sit up unassisted in his chair!!!! In those two hours, he made a big leap out of babyhood.


Have I mentioned that I feel like I'm not in control? It's all happening so fast... too fast.

At the same time, look how thrilled and proud he was after a little taste of independence and freedom? There I was.... by his side, looking on with pride, joy, fear, and a tint of sadness... and feeling my facial muscles twitch... secretly glad that no one could see it.

I know what you're thinking. "Welcome to motherhood", huh?!