the missing ears

Lately, Jovan often "lost" his ears.

This morning, when I was doing something I couldn't leave, I noticed Jovan was plucking tissues out of the box. He plucked a sheet, threw it on the floor, plucked another one, threw it on the floor, on and on like that till a heap of tissues (about a quarter of the box) was piled next to his feet. I asked him nicely to stop doing that, and he kept doing what he was doing without even glancing at me. He did not hear my voice even when I have started shouting.

He only stopped when I picked him physically, put him to stand near the wall for time-out while I picked the tissues on the floor. Looking at him standing quietly with innocent face, I couldn't get angry for long...

But yeah, that and other similar incidents have made me scrambling to find out the best (and working) method to discipline him nicely.

So far... no luck yet. Any advice? :)

puzzles

Hubby bought a Lightning McQueen 12-piece jigsaw puzzle for Jove a few months ago. He bought it just because Jove liked the picture so much. One day, Jove tried the puzzle and got hooked. Now he have about 7 puzzles and one puzzle book (with 5 puzzles inside) that he regularly do. Like a hobby!


For the 12-piece puzzles, he does not need any help. But for the 30-piece and 48-piece puzzle, we need to help him sort out the side pieces to be done first. After a few tries, usually he would start to remember the places.


Being a firstborn, Jove always surprise us with his interest. I googled about puzzle and children development afterwards, it turned out that puzzles aid children hand-eye coordination and the development of memory. Jove plays with his puzzles daily and just in three or four days he can usually do his puzzle without any help in the initial sorting. He even can place the middle pieces at their correct places out of his memory. It's really fun to see him do the puzzles. :)

the baby in the womb

Jovan surprised me this morning. He showed me this picture:


I asked him what it was. He answered that it was his little baby sister in mama's tummy. The long lines flowing from mama's head was the long hair. Then the little figure at the right side was Jovan.

Naturally, I told my mom about that and the curious grandmother asked him to draw the little baby inside mama's tummy. And draw he did! :)


Oooh, and yes, we're having a baby girl this time. The ob-gyn finally confirmed it when we checked last monday. Daddy was estatic. Jovan is getting a sister.

coloring competition

Our cluster in Alam Sutera, Kirana, always have a bazaar in August to celebrate Indonesia's independence day. This year, they had a coloring and drawing competitions for kids. We did not register Jovan to join because he was way too small for the competition. The youngest age range is 4-5 years old for coloring. But when we saw Jovan looked interested, we asked him whether he wanted to join. He said he wanted to! So we paid Rp. 15,000.- and Jovan took part in his first competition.

He did his piece seriously. At first, I thought he would draw a car or something on that page because he never colored any picture before. He usually just drew and colored his own drawing. But apparently, he understood that he only had to color the picture.

He sat there for, well, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, until he was satisfied with his work.

Then he just got up when he considered his artwork done.

I think the dad, the uncle, the grandpa, or the aunts who came by once in a while took part in telling him to color the cloud blue or to use red for the flag. But, at least everything was done by him. Nobody expected him to win but we did enjoy one of the best moments. :)