Less Than A Month and She'll be Two

23months! One more month before Zara celebrates her 2nd birthday. We are really happy with the way she's growing. Every night after she goes to bed, we like to stare at her, and talk about her achievement in the last 23months. It's just amazing, how much she's grown.

~ Weight : 10.1kg (2 weeks ago)
~ Height : 86cm (3 cms in a month? But we do realise some of her pants just suddenly shortened)

Dexterity
~ Started feeding herself with a spoon
~ Able to press pieces of play dough in a mold to get the shape and print she wants.
~ Floating in a pool with her arm floats (actually she started this in Aug but she's getting really good now)
~ Hold a pencil, marker the proper way (nobody actually taught her this), and able to draw circles or lines or curvey lines (she said she's drawing snakes or worms) intentionally (though not perfect yet)
~ Able to do the thumbs up sign to indicate "Good" and thumbs down to indicate "Bad"
~ Walk up and down stairs without holding on to the railing (but we still insist she hold on to the railing for safety reasons)

Emotions and character
~ Becoming very homely, prefers to stay at home most of the time. And wanting to go home after spending some time out.
~ Started to have strong dislikes about some people. These people make her cry or fuss when they go near her. Like the case with Daddy's friend and KC.
~ Sometimes she pretends to be a baby. When she doesn't get her way, instead of telling us what she really wants, she whines. When we change her, she likes to making the 'ooh-weh' 'ooh-weh' sound, and says, "Zara's a baby"
~ She's very into manners now, so she's using Excuse me, Thank You, Sorry, You're Welcome, Please when appropriate.

Language
~ Since Phuket, she started pronouncing her name perfectly, stressing the Z and the R. She's no longer calling herself 'Wawa'
~ She's using words like 'accidentally', 'uncomfortable' now
~ She's picking different words to differentiate baby and adult animals; and some cases masculine and feminne of animals.
She goes like this, "Daddy horse is called stallion; Mummy horse is called Mare; Baby horse is called Foal."
"Daddy chicken is called Cockerel; Mummy chicken is called Hen; Baby chicken is called a Chick."
~ She likes to pretend to speak in different voices and tones to represent the baby, the daddy or the mummy talking (just like voices I used when I read her Goldilocks and The 3 Bears) when she's at play.
~ She's able to sing a few songs completely, e.g. Old Mc Donald, Do Re Me, London Bridge Is Falling Down, Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars etc.; and recite some nursery rhymes, e.g. Wee Willy Winky, Pussy Cat Pussy Cat, Hey Diddle Diddle etc.

Learning
~ I'm trying to teach her phonics, and so far, able to teach her the B sound and the C sound.
~ I'm teaching her Mandarin, so far, she knows how to say 嘴巴 (mouth), 鼻子(nose), 眼睛(eyes), 耳朵(ear), 没有(don't have, no more), 要 (want), 不要 (don't want). We don't speak Mandarin at home, so I think it's quite an achievement. :P