Stack away!

Well, the stacking cups are really old toys that have quite been forgotten and never quite used in the way they were intended to till lately. She would (and still does!) pretend to drink from these cups, or hold one of the cups with her lips and crawl/ cruise/ walk around (depending on the stage that she's in) pretending to be some animal, or simply put something small in the cup and shake it wildly to make some noise. I haven't really been 'teaching' her how to play with those stackable cups for the past few months coz like I said, they're a forgotten toy. I just dug them out for her recently because I read that 16-mth-olds should be able to build a tower of 2 blocks at least before they reach 17mths and maybe build a higher tower of 3-4 blocks even, if they are fast. Hence, I went to dig out her stacking cups and showed her once how to build a tower of 4 cups. She, needless to say, destroyed my tower of cups. Surprisingly, she went on to build her own tower of cups and voila, she did it(!) and then proceeded to destroy the tower she'd built. Haha. Well well well... didn't really need to teach much. I guess when it's time for them to master a skill, we don't really need to 'teach' that much! :) These few days, she's starting to clap after she succeeds in building a tower of 4 cups and will look at me for approval - of coz i'd clap and praise her!

These days, when she sees these cups lying randomly around in the house, she'd just go over and stack them then carry a tower of at least 2 cups carefully around with her as she toddles in the house. I think she secretly likes the challenge of balancing the cups as she walks. When I do manage to get a video of her stacking cups I'd upload it here. You know, for babies and toddlers, things happen so fast that they're over before you can even whip out a camera or a phone. For now, here's a pic of the stacking cups:

Story-telling session at Bukit Merah Library

I signed Alicia up for a story-telling session held at Bukit Merah Library at 7.30pm on 11/11/09.

And here's the recount of the session:

The librarian went through some rhymes and short little songs before actually going into story-telling. She told the story of The Enormous Turnip and had cute little props made of cloth on ice-cream sticks. The props included the turnip of course, a farmer, a dog, a rat and I can't remember what else. The kids were either seated (though not all were really actually listening to the librarian's story) or wandering around. And what was my Alicia doing? She was of course wandering around, tottering about in the room. Well, that wasn't all that she did in that half an hour. She actually went up to the librarian several times, attempting to snatch the book and her props. Later she noticed that the props were actually on the chair next to the librarian and so she helped herself to them. She grabbed the turnip first. The librarian had a hard time getting it back from her. I didn't want to snatch it from her grasp coz she would wail and destroy the whole story-telling session and anyway, I'm sure this happens all the time so I just waited to see what the librarian would do. Subsequently, when alicia took the dog and later the rat, the librarian just told the rest of the kids that alicia was pretending to be the dog/rat, which i think was an appropriate way to handle the situation.

Just when i thought that that was all the disruption she was going to cause, a much older kid went to the CD player and tried to remove the CD and of course, my little one decided to follow suit. She's very good with electronics and always seems to be able to press the right buttons and so she decided to turn on the music. The librarian was stunned and speechless and helpless for awhile. Hahaha. Then after stopping the music, she commented that Alicia's quite a techie, to which I definitely agree. Hmm... i think Alicia must be the librarian's worst nightmare now... I may well be barred from the next story-telling session - islandwide... hahaha...

Well, here's a pic of alicia wandering about (and me hovering around her) while the librarian was telling the story...

Alicia's checking out the recommended books on the table

We borrowed five books for her that night and so here's the selection of library books I have now at home:

I made hubby clean every page of the books with dettol upon reaching home so that they'd be CLEAN!

The last time my niece borrowed library books she got HFMD - not sure if it's a coincidence but it's better to be safe than sorry...

Oh, and we managed to get Happy HoliDogs on Ebay and it's on its way to Singapore now... not cheap though. We got it for US$12.69 I think (erm, the funny thing's the shipping costs US$12 and the book's only US$0.69!)