making jelly

Today is Papa's birthday. We made jelly in the morning. Jove mixed the jelly powder with sugar and he also stirred the liquid once in a while. I poured a thin layer of the liquid on a flat plate, waited for a while, then shoved it into the freezer. Two minutes later, voila, a cold jelly flab for Jove to observe, play, and eat.

Papa can eat the jelly when he came back later. Happy birthday, Pa!

full fun day

Once in a while, I had a very productive day which enabled me to create some play things for Jove. Yesterday was one of such days.

We had fun playing the salt dough (1 cup salt, 2 cups flour, water as needed) on the sofa.

Then while Jove took his nap, I managed to make this felt story board. Have been planning to make this since forever, never started till yesterday.

I put this on the bed and let Jove played with it by himself. He was quiet for sometime... I was starting to feel happy that he liked what I've made. When I checked, he was busy stuffing those felt figures down the little space between the wall and the bed. Now some of them still lie down there since it was difficult to shift the bed.

Oh dear...

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. :)

doc hudson

Jove was addicted to Pixar's CARS. He used to watch the movie everyday (could be twice a day if I let him). Thankfully, the addiction wore off (after a month or so, and I've almost memorized the dialogue). But he is still very fond of one car, Doc Hudson. I don't understand why it is just this one car, but maybe it's about taste.

He often asked me to play whatever short animation of Doc Hudson that I could find in You Tube. Or to find its pictures online. Through Google, I found out a lot about the real Hudson Hornet and its pictures. Jove loved to browse through the pictures. He would just sit there, on my lap, in front of the notebook, and watch the slide show of Hudson Hornets that I found in the internet.

One day, we were in a toy store when he noticed a Hornet among other Hot Wheels cars on the shelves. He asked for it, and we bought it for him. More than a month has passed since then and there has not been a day when he did not play with his beloved Hornet. He called it Doc Hudson and brought it with him almost everywhere. He would ask us to put the car in the fridge/freezer when it became too warm on his hand. Papa and Ama have bought him two other new Hot Wheels car since then, but he liked them less. Doc Hudson is still the best.

I have to say that this fascination amazed me a lot. Even his father do not share as much enthusiasm as him regarding cars. So, where does it come from?

boys will be boys

Jove's pose when watching soccer or car race on TV. He can sit still and watch quietly for several minutes longer than if he watches or does anything else.

His favorite toys are cars, trucks, buldozers, helicopters, airplanes, ... you get the idea. And he has shown this keen interest on those things since he was about six months old! By twelve months, before he could walk, he could differentiate car, truck, and bus on the road. He'll say tar, tak, and bas (all rhymes with car) while pointing at correctly said vehicle.

I've read in some books that a child liked his/her gender related toys (boys like cars, and girls like dolls) just because the parents exposed him/her to those toys more. But I don't agree. I did gave Jovan some of my old dolls to play, showed him flowers and other girly things, but he didn't seem to be interested.

first time swimming!

We just bought the baby float the week before and I was totally excited to experience my baby's first plunge. We went with the grandparents, the grandpa wanted to swim with his grandson.

It was the first time my father ever swam in the kiddy pool of our housing estate's sport club. He went in proudly and his grandson followed. I put him in feet first, then with some talk and persuasion I lowered him down slowly till my father could grab him. He almost cried, but he didn't. After sometime, when he seemed okay, grandpa put him into the yellow baby float.