Teacher feedback, "Pony" & Tricycle-riding etc.

Lately, I'm hearing nice feedback from Dylan's teachers, eg.:
- Last week, Ethan from AAS mentioned that Dylan was able to get the message, when Ethan looked at the chair and then Dylan, that he was to push the chair in under the table.

- Francis from St Gerard shared that Dylan has been showing increased ability to stay seated through circle time, even yesterday when there was a combined class & hence much bigger than the usual, he only stood up a couple of times & with the teacher looking at him, he sat down.

- He's very affectionate in school, and likes to hug. (Oh yes, he's consistently running towards me to hug when I go to pick him up from school, or return home from work, or open his bedroom door when he's about to sleep - to pull me by my hand to go inside the room.)

Nice going!

PONY & TRICYCLE RIDING
Today, as it's the September school holidays, at St Gerard's they have a theme week (shopping in wet market, supermarket & tomorrow even flea market etc.), and today they visited Vivo city. Met up with his teachers there to fetch him, since it's right next to my office. After lunch at the herbal restaurant where he ate mostly non-nutritious food like buns, little rice, 1 mushroom, and a couple of herbal crackers, almost a whole glass of hawthorn drink, we went strolling along the third level outdoor area, with its wading pools. Impressive that even though initially he was ready to jump right in, after being restrained twice, he got the message I wasn't about to compromise. Then we headed downstairs to the partially indoor playground where there are false ponies of varying sizes that would move (glide along) when the rider moves the butt up & down, and use hands to push the handle forward and backwards.

Considering that not too long ago, Dylan could cause battery-operated car to topple when riding on one, I'm so impressed that I only helped him hand-over-hand a little while & he got the hang of it and was competent to ride it straight and independently to the other end and back twice! Melba & I were both thrilled!

Then at home, after dinner, Mel decided to try putting Dylan on the tricycle which has been around since he was 1, and for the first time, he was able to peddle on his own, after a slight push to start the motion. Now, all of us, including Daddy were really excited that he can manage this motor activity!

KIDDY PARTY AND SWIMMING
Yesterday, I took the afternoon off & we attended Dylan's AAS classmate's (Cassandra) 4th birthday party, and since it's a poolside tea party, I decided we'll have an RDI pool session while we're there! Indeed Dylan was exhilarated when he woke from his nap to find he's by a pool. He was so keen to participate in the jumping in the pool together with mommy there were many instances he practically pulled me up to jump with him. It's really nice! Too bad by the time we started filming, he was getting tired and there was somewhat less initiative from him, and some disengagements. He also kept going to get warmth by leaning on the stone turtle as it was windy and he probably felt cold. He also didn't seem to notice I let him skip the birthday cake as I left his digestive enzymes in the car.

When I see other Moms /aunties trying hard to restrain their little ones from plonking in to the pool, I thank God Dylan doesn't have health issues holding him back from fun in the pool!

Another thing to sing hallelujah is that Dylan seem to have developed a healthy fear/respect of deep waters - before I was ready to join him & he was alone in the pool, even though he had his armbands on, he walked down the stairs and pushed off, but when he realised he couldn't touch the bottom, he swam back very soon. (Even over the weekend when Juergen & I brought him to Keppel Club, we also noticed that whereas we used to get heart attack trying to out-run & stop him from jumping in the deep pool without us, now he has some safety awareness to jump in but hold on to the side of the pool and climb back out almost right away. Yeah!)

Now I'm able to jump in with him without armbands without fear that he'd just struggle. In fact, we have many wow moments of sharing! Nice!

TRAMPOLINE JUMPING AND STAIRS CLIMBING
Tonite he was very good engaging with me jumping on the trampoline -he's able to take longer pauses before resumption and obviously had a lot of fun in the joint participation. In fact, he actually looked at my face and didn't jump when I shook my head and jumped when I nodded, followed by movement.

But he was quite disengaged climbing stairs. He also peed twice on the stairs, and twice at home. Despite my saying "stop", he didn't/ couldn't but continued & afterwards he was happily playing in the puddle, gliding around, seated. I was quite upset, and seeing him so clueless about my upset & merrily splashing his urine, I slapped his thigh. But on hindsight, it's no big deal, and I'm not entirely sure if he was unable to understand it cognitively or it was simply a matter of lack of bladder control. One connection I can really see is that when he wears pull-up for an extended time (as he did since they had a school outing earlier today), it really affects his gesturing (by touching his crotch or bring my hand to it) to indicate a need to go. (He had verbalised "wee wee" a couple of times before but has not developed this verbal communication for this purpose reliably before.)

Well, agreed with Mel on a tough strategy to reduce pull-up as much as possible....