My sweet little girl is 3

I loved it when she was 1. I loved it more when she turned 2. And now she is 3 - she's turned into a sweetest baby girl in the whole world.

She'd talked about her 3rd birthday about months before her birthday. She said she'd buy lots of flowers for Mommy. She would love a birthday cake and a birthday dress. On her birthday, she got multiple nasty insect bites on her face, one nastiest bite on her left eye that made her so miserable. But that didn't stop my birthday girl to be the centre of the universe. She had one birthday party at home with our adult friends and one birthday party at school. Everyone sang her the birthday song and at night she hums that tune for so long until she fell asleep.

Winter is approaching. Bing Bing got pretty sick over the last week. She got a very sore throat and spoke in a man's voice. She got a high fever every 8 hours. She was crying when she got a temperature but she was the sweetest little one when it's gone. That ached my heart so much to see her suffering from this virus.

Bing Bing and I spent a whole day together yesterday. I could feel that both our hearts and souls were filled up with love and contentment. We read books together, we played puzzles together, we danced together, we cooked together and watched Jurassic World together. She was such a brave girl. She loved action movies, especially with those dinosaurs. She asked me about what was happening and why it happened the way it did every 3 minutes which was adorable. I answered every question she had and it was amazing how much she could understand.

She made lunch for us. Yes, she cooked carrots and broccoli, she cooked chicken wings and she used chopsticks pretty well. I was impressed by my little one throughout the day. We did a puzzle about the four seasons in a year. She saw pumpkins in autumn and said "Mommy I touched a pumpkin yesterday in the flower zoo! It was too big you can't eat it." I was thinking "What flower zoo? When did you touch a big pumpkin?" But I remembered. We went to Hamilton Garden over the weekend where I took a picture of her with 4-5 large pumpkins and I asked her to touch one of them. "Flower zoo... That's clever and funny." I thought to myself and I loved her ability to connect the dots, all the events together. That's how much a baby's brain wired up. Amazing.

Bing Bing loved Teeda. She named him the moment she got the news. She pressed her ears on my tummy and listened to Teeda kicking everyday. "Did you hear anything Bing Bing? Is he sleeping?" I asked. "No Mommy, Teeda wakes up. He kicks BUM BUM BUM like the fireworks in the sky. I hear it." Oh yes, there was a hot air balloon festival in Hamilton last weekend and we took her to see the fireworks. Again, she connected the dots.

Bing Bing often talked about how she would take care of Teeda, that she would feed him so he'd grow bigger and bigger, that she would bathe him, change him, read to him, teach him how to swim and everything that she loves doing. But she always bargained with me that she wanted a brother AND a sister. Bing Bing has a biggest heart that is full with love and understanding. She would be an amazing big sister I'm sure of it. That gives me pleasure to think about our third baby. I hoped it'd be a girl so Bing Bing had her wish.

Teeda has been kicking so so much, sometimes so hard that I jumped and screamed out. I can't wait to meet him and introduce the two of them to each other and start to see their relationship develops.

Alex

Month 35-36: Passion is to be found

We are 10 days away from Bing Bing’s 3^rd birthday. Alex told me the other day that there was some interesting tennis class for toddlers which should be quite fun. After some discussion, we decided that she would not learn something too specific at this stage of development. Instead, we would like to expose Bing to as many fun activities as possible, so that she could continue to experience new things and gradually form her own interests and tastes.

Music

Bing Bing listened to various artists, e.g. Adele, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift, and Michael Jackson to name a few. Adele was her favorite artist at the moment. Besides, she especially liked songs with strong beat as she could either dance along or “shake it off”. Of course, it was still too early for Bing Bing to fully understand all the lyrics. However, I was amazed to see that she could feel the emotions expressed in the songs. One day she was listening to “Someone like you” by Adele and she told me “Daddy, Adele is a bit upset”. We also bought music CDs in different languages for Bing Bing. She listened to her Spanish CD so often that she actually remembered the lyrics and rhythm. One day we were in the car and there was an Italian song playing on the radio. Bing Bing listened intensely and then queried “I don’t understand this song. It is not Spanish”.

Dance

Bing Bing surely had some happy feet. She could either dance or jump around non-stop whenever her favorite music was on. However, it should be noted that, like driving, she danced to the conditions (of the floor). During Christmas, we went to a colleague’s house and all the kids danced happily, except my little one. Erm, this was not usual at all – so I asked her “You are not dancing honey. What’s happening?”. Bing Bing looked at me blankly and said “It’s not soft Daddy”. Oh yeah, now it made sense. Bing Bing only loved to dance and roll on the premium carpet floor that was installed at our new home right before Christmas. The carpet she was standing on at that time was no match for ours J.

Sports

I quite like a quote about passion “Passion comes from a special fit between an activity and a person. You can't force that fit; it has to be found”. This was especially true in sports and Bing Bing was allowed to explore multiple types of sports on her own. Recently, I joined another badminton club in North Shore and they played from 7pm to 10pm every Saturday. We had brought Bing Bing along twice so that she could watch the games and play with my spare racquet. She had great fun playing outside the courts and quickly caught up with the rules. Bing Bing explained to Alex “When the bell rings, all the children (FYI - she meant my club members) stop playing Mommy”. I loved it even more when she spoke to me in Vietnamese the next day “Ba oi, ba huong dan Bing Bing choi cau long nhe” (i.e. Daddy, can you please teach me how to play badminton?”). Two weeks ago, Alex found a kids’ martial art class for Bing Bing, in which they taught Choi Kwang Do. This school of martial art was more flexible than Taekwondo and the teacher told Bing Bing and her classmates on the first day that "Remember, the only place that you can fight is within this class". Bing Bing talked about martial art all day now and she kept stressing the point that “Daddy, it’s not fighting OK”. We planned to bring Bing Bing to Alex's table tennis club soon so that she could experience another game. 

Food

Bing Bing’s default answer to any sort of new food is “No I don’t want it”, combined with multiple head-shaking. That was why we needed to eagerly encourage her to try new stuff every time. “Please try it first honey” – said Alex, “You can always spit it out if you really don’t like it. But you need to try”. That worked well for us, and I realized that Bing Bing rarely spat anything out after trying. We went to the zoo quite often and some animal stories were quite helpful when it came to food. Bing Bing’s favourite zoo animals were Buma the Elephant, giraffe, seal and tiger/ cheetah. I often reminded her about the tiger “Do you know why the tiger is strong Bing Bing? Because it eats a lot of meat” when I wanted her to have some more protein.

About Teeda…

It took me quite a while to come up with the name Bing Bing when Alex was pregnant back in 2013. This time, I asked Bing Bing to name her little brother/sister and she instantly came up with the name of Teeda. We went for a 20-week pregnancy scan this morning and the doctor told that everything was beautifully normal. She also confirmed that Teeda would be a little boy and this part of the story actually made me a bit nervous. I would need to read more and learn how to raise a son now. The way Teeda kicked Mom’s belly was totally different from that of Bing Bing – and I assumed that was a hint about his personality being different from Bing Bing's. Bing Bing went in the scan room with me and she was really excited to see Teeda moving on the screen. However, Bing Bing had always said she wanted Teeda to be a girl and her denial mode was on even after the doctor had already confirmed otherwise. Bing Bing took a profile picture of Teeda for her “Show and Tell” today; and she told her dear teacher Andrea that “Teeda is a girl. But I want a brother and a sister”. 

I cannot wait to celebrate Bing Bing's 3rd birthday. She's grown so much during the past year and we are so looking forward to the next.