Some Random Developmental Updates of Juan Or

It has been a long time since Mommy updated about Juan Or's development.

Previously before Juan Or started kindergarten in 2012, he refused to chew his solid food (except for white rice which he loves!), so Mommy had to 'mash and blend' everything (in Mommy's mouth!) before giving it to him. But now, he is capable of feeding and chewing himself already, except for the more fibrous veges whereby Mommy still has to process them in the mouth first.

So here's a photo of Juan Or proudly feeding himself. These photos were taken when we had lunch at Coconut Flower Restaurant (Telok Gong).

The other dishes we ate were mantis prawn,...

kangkung belacan,

and Papa and Mommy's \all-time favourite - steamed mud crabs!

Unfortunately, the only dish Juan Or knows how to eat is the kangkung belacan. As for the other two dishes, he refused to even give a try.


Another developmental milestone for Juan Or is that he is already able to 'build his own city' by joining his Thomas and Friends' railway tracks to form a combination of junctions, underpass, bridges, etc., only thing is that he is still not able to join the tracks to form a complete circuit. So far, they are only open-ended tracks.

Mommy's Little Helper in the Training

Today's post is just a quick one as Mommy's afternoon is occupied with appointments.

Just last week Tuesday at night, Mommy did a quick treatment with the lime fruits that Mommy bought from Econsave. Actually, Mommy should have done this 'treatment' earlier, but had been postponing it for about a week or so after buying them (blame it on low motivation after long hours at work!). Now with the thought that 'rotting' is not too far away, Mommy's motivation to 'do something' picks up again.


Mommy bought this big handful of limau kasturi for cooking purposes. Usually for the kind of dishes that Mommy cooks, the juice of limau kasturi is to add a tangy twist to canned sardine dishes, assam prawns cooked with bird's eye chillies and also as one of the ingredients for a prawn marinade. Before this, Mommy would just buy a small amount and store in the fridge's drawer in special green plastic bags that are supposed to prolong the shelf-life of veges and fruits. However, this shelf-life prolongation thing has a limit. And sometimes it's just not practical to purposely buy a lime fruit or two whenever Mommy needs to cook a dish that uses it. But then again, buying according to needs is not cost-effective in the long run because you will be subjected to the highs and lows of the market price at any one time you need to buy it. So that 's why Mommy has finally decided to spare some time to make bulk preparation of lime juice for long term storage, usage and cost-effectiveness. And in view of the future too, Mommy has decided to train this Little Boy to be Mommy's Little Helper for few reasons:

• to train him to help Mommy do some housework so that next time when he's older, he knows how to help around without being told (hopefully!)
• to let him develop his motor skills and hand-eye coordination
• to let him 'play' (while doing the real thing) since he likes to play masak-masak (cooking) with his toys
• this is part of Mommy's long-term effort to delegate household tasks since children are still easy to mould at this stage (this relates to the first bullet point as well!)
• this will be a great help to his future wife next time! ^_^

First, using a cleaver, Mommy halved all the lime fruits. Then using a garlic crusher, Mommy demonstrated to Juan Or by putting in a half-fruit and then bringing the handles together to squeeze the juice out into a mug. After that, discard the lime debris and repeat the whole procss again.

Now it's Juan Or turn to do all this. ^_^

Putting in the lime into the garlic crusher........

Then squeeeeeeezeeeeee........

To make sure all juice is squeezed out, add more strength - "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

After that, let Mommy pick up the lime debris to throw away......hehehehe!

To make the juice 'cleaner', Mommy strained the juice into another clean mug.

Here's the final yield - the limau kasturi juice!

For long-term storage, Mommy covered the mug with a plastic cap salvaged from a Mr. Potato canister......

.....and store it in the freezer. Voila! The lime juice will be thawed (and refrozen) as and when needed.

By the way, Juan Or only managed to sit through the squeezing process for about 15 to 20 minutes only, after which he told Mommy he wanted to join Papa upstairs to enjoy the air-cond and play with his choo-choo trains. *Smirk on the face*

Striking the Balance

Juan Or is one little boy who is fond of stacking objects 'as high as the KL Tower' just to test the balance and perhaps stability. If it crashes, then he will start stacking all over again to reach the maximum point where the 'tower' will be as high as possible, yet won't tumble down.

This was his creation yesterday. Actually, the four bottom most containers (actually are containers for playdough) were originally stacked by Papa. Then upon seeing the opportunity, Juan Or started stacking more things  - adding one more playdough container and a kettle. But don' be deceived by the kettle. The kettle was not merely an empty kettle, it contained many magnetic alphabets inside. He carefully inserted the magnetic alphabets one by one into the already stacked kettle. ^_^ By the way, Juan Or is a big boy already. He seems to know how to pose for the camera these days, and with his trademark cheeky smile too! ^_^

This is the full set of his 'Toyland creation'. He is fond of arranging his whatever odds-and-end toys, including objects that he salvaged from the kitchen (like the Fruit Tree empty bottle and microwaveable plastic container), onto the tea table. If Mommy attempts to move or take away any of these from his 'creation', he will appear slightly agitated and wants to grab it back from Mommy!

An Update of Juan Or's Hand-Eye Coordination Development

This is an outdated post dating back to 9th July 2010. Mommy was not able to blog (and even bloghop) regularly due to the MQA documentation thing, but thankfully, as of yesterday afternoon, the document (that gave Mommy mental stress for 7 long months!) is finally submitted to MQA!

This post is merely a record of Juan Or's hand-eye coordination development. Juan Or's version of 'colouring' are still in scribbles, no longer random scribbles, but rather scribbles that go round and round in circles. And this boy likes stickers too. He chose to paste his 'star' stickers into his Mickey Mouse colouring book (which Mommy had downloaded from internet). One thing makes Mommy wonder though is that although he still scribbles, yet somehow he is able to arrange his stickers (or even objects) in a line that makes sense (but he never bothers to clear or tidy his scattered toys on the floor unless Mommy forces him to!).

This was the process.....

.....and this is his resulting handwork!