Mummy speaks : Toto pls dont grow up so fast...

The past week, Toto has amazed me with her social and verbal developments. Verbally, she is officially a parrot now, and surprises me everyday with new phrases and songs that I never expected her to pick up. To date, she can sing (tunelessly though) a few songs - eg Ba ba black sheep, twinkle twinkle little star (first 2 lines), 2 little tigers (in chinese - liang2 zhi1 lao2 hu3), the barney i-love-u song, and some chinese children songs (wa2 wa2 guo3 and wo shi yi ge da ping guo). Unfortunately, she is super camera shy and zips up the mo i whip out the camcorder! argh...

Thanks to Zy's parents, her chinese is super polished now too, and she can rattle off the San1 Zi4 Jing1 pretty much effortlessly.. the amount she knows far surpasses what I know (though that's no surprise given that my chinese is SHITE). Thankfully, her english isnt too backward either, and she is now speaking in short 4-5 word sentences for both english and chinese.

Recently, she has also started to react emotionally to certain stories which she has known for ages. Eg, when Zy's mum read her Hansel and Gretel 2 days ago, she actually cried at the part where Hansel and Gretel's woodcutter dad left them behind in the woods, and then started wailing for papa and mummy.. face was flooded with tears apparently.

On a separate occasion, Zy's father was telling her the story of a fillial daughter who helped to cover her elderly mother with a blanket when she fell asleep in a chair. He pointed to the picture of the white haired lady, and said that mummy will become like this one day and that she has to take care of mummy when that day comes. To his shock, when he next looked at her, tears were streaming down her face and she just kept pointing at the elderly lady and going mummy... mummy... when i came home that day, she raced to the door and flung herself to me for the rest of the day until I reassured her that my hair was black, not white like the elderly mother in the picture book and that mummy is not going to be old any time soon. only then did she stop crying every time she looked at that picture. Not sure why she reacted so strongly to this picture book as we have not explained what the consequences of being old are (ie death, etc).

She is also growing up to be very affectionate, and will turn to me very often without prompting, plant a big wet kiss on my cheek or hug me and say I LOVE YOU MUMMY. aww... at night before she sleeps, she also makes it a point to kiss my tummy (yes, to those who do not know yet, #2 is along the way now and due in Aug) and say Goodnight baby, i love you..

My little girl is growing up way too fast...

**Afternote - I am so afraid I will forget all these little stories as more things happen.. and the blog is a wonderful way for me to jot down my thoughts and feelings at each point of her life. Wish there is a way to freeze each moment and video everything down.