The Bub in the Belly

I have been sewing a lot more recently and I thought I'd sneak some words here and there about the pieces I worked on. Today I'm showcasing Rachel's yellow top with pink butterflies! You may recognise it from our trip to Legoland earlier this month. I used the Ice Cream Dress sewing pattern from Oliver + S, which was excellent. I made the top version (instead of the dress version) in the 12-18 months size and without the notch at the neckline. The fabric is a 100% cotton from Spotlight. I had just enough left over after I cut out a circle skirt for Shann's daughter, Rou Ern sometime ago. I think Rachel appreciated the ease of movement and the lightness of the fabric. She looked very comfortable and happy in it.

On a separate note, notice that there are no photos of me with the children on the blog lately. For whatever reason, Richard doesn't take photos of me. He will take photos of the children, but not when I am with them. He will photograph me only if I ask him to (and I rarely do), but if so, it will be a "smile at the camera" kind of shot - the kind of photos you would take with a relative you see twice a year, those that have little memory of the moment other than "we were here". I wish that I had more photos of me and the children just sharing our little moments, doing our things, photojournalist style. I don't often write about myself in terms of what I do with the children and I guess I expect Richard to appreciate the beauty in those moments and shoulder the responsibility for documenting them. I know different people think differently. Not every person reaches for the camera as often as I do and not every person has the same "photographic eye". But still.

It is a real problem. Looking through the blog, I am annoyed that I seem to be missing from my children's lives. I am annoyed that I come across as an observer and a reporter, but not a participant, which is ironic because, as between Richard and I, he is more of an observer/reporter. I am annoyed that I am documenting every memorable moment, yet the ones that involve me are lost to my children. I am annoyed that someone, long ago, assumed that this blog was written by Richard. Yes, I am annoyed with Richard - I've mentioned this to him before and nothing has changed and I hate to repeat myself (because my philosophy is that if I have to repeat myself, it's a sign that you're not bothered). I have to figure this one out because so many moments have been lost already plus if, God forbid, something should happen to part my children from me, they will not remember what I look like! Any ideas?

Our weekend was less eventful than our previous one, except ... and this is a big "except" ... Richard and I went to watch Pet Shop Boys in concert! Woohoo!

Yes, you read that right, Pet Shop Boys. Ahem.

Some of you can't tell if I'm being sarcastic? I haven't decided either. Heh. No, no, I do like their music and it was a superb concert. The band was here to promote their new album, Electric, but they played enough of their golden oldies to keep everyone happy, ending the night with, what else, West End Girls. Actually, Richard is their faithful fan. He has every single album, which means that I have also heard all their music by default. We were definitely among the hard-core fan(atics) chanting "All day all day/Watch them all fall down/All day all day/Domino dancing" and when it came time to sing "Go West", we marched along with the best of them.

We dropped off the littles at their nanny's before the concert and picked them up after. Took them for supper, which was actually dinner for Richard and me, because the traffic was so bad that we didn't have time for dinner before the concert. By the time we got everyone home, it was close to midnight. Everyone went to la-la land pretty quickly. Richard and I were exhausted, having been on our feet for nearly two hours at the concert (we were moshing right in front of the stage!) and it was way past bedtime for the littles.

That was Saturday night. The day was spent in the usual way - Rachel went for Heguru with Richard while I chauffeured Ryan to another class. Richard reported that Rachel spent the whole class near him and did not wander off in search of adventure. Her behaviour was so strikingly different that, after the class, Teacher Rhian asked if Rachel was feeling tired! I'm going to give it a couple more lessons before I declare that she is finally settled in.

Sunday was spent, believe it or not, at the airport. We were at T3 from about 5 to 10 pm! We wanted to bring Ryan to Singkids to give him a workout but the boy fell asleep on the drive there, so we hung about with Rachel while he slept in the stroller. Rachel was happy to walk around the airport, Charlie Chaplin style, charming all the passerbys. I kept having to answer questions about her, mostly about how old she is. Around 7 pm, we decided to have dinner at Gurney Drive. Ryan managed to sleep through that too. When he finally woke up and realised where he was, there was no holding back - we had to stay on for Singkids. Both kids went in, which meant that Rachel had another workout. After that, we still had to feed Ryan his belated dinner. By the time we got home, it was the end of another exhausting day.

Here are some photos from Saturday morning, when we woke up early enough to go for a prata breakfast. Ryan has taken to eating "tissue prata" - he loves it because it is served as a huge cone. We introduced it when he started learning about 3-D shapes so I guess it tied in with his "sensitive period" for learning, as per Montessori teaching. Heh heh, maybe I should think about other types of food which I can introduce according to his sensitive periods!


I wanted to share this series of photos of babydoll, asking for her share of the prata. They're hilarious!

"Give me some, Papa."


"I'm telling you, don't mess around with me!"


"Don't mess with the best, cos the best don't mess!"


Haha, babydoll is usually very ladylike and girly, so it was really quite amusing to capture these photos! (to clarify - the third shot in the series was a fluke shot. She wasn't actually threatening me!)

Thank you so much for all the wonderful messages sent my way over yesterday's post. It's so uplifting and reassuring to have good vibes coming at you from the universe. Thank you, thank you.

Shall we go back to talking about the good stuff today? Yes, I think so! Let's do the Rachel updates.

A few significant updates this past week. First one is that babydoll is now preferring to walk instead of crawl. I think it was only two updates ago that she was walking but crawling more. I thought it would take some time to make the transition. As it turned out, it's only been a short while and it's already the other way around. This girl is in a hurry!

Last update on Heguru, I wrote that Rachel had reached a turning point because she started paying attention to the class activities and to the teacher. So for her class last weekend, I was curious to see how she would behave. As it turned out, I had to accompany Ryan elsewhere so Richard took her for class. Anyway, it was good because it was Richard's first time at a Heguru class and I was curious to hear what he thought of it.


Well, according to Richard, Rachel was active but stayed close to him. She was interested in the class activities and generally paid attention. In fact, he said that some of the other students were much more restless. She still ate the crayons though, heh heh.

Richard will be accompanying babydoll for the next few classes as I will need to be with Ryan during that time, so this is going to be her new routine. In any case, as Rachel seems to be at the point where she is shifting her focus to the class activities, we will stick to having the same parent accompany her for now, to minimise distraction.


In other news, Richard and Rachel have reverted to sleeping separately from Ryan and me. Apparently it is a guarantee that, when you put Rachel and me in the same room, she is going to wake up and look for me in the middle of the night. Sigh. So, for everyone's sake, we are a divided family when we sleep. Even as it is now, Richard says that babydoll still wakes up once a night and tries to go up the stairs to find me.

Babydoll is still on breastmilk, although much much less than what Ryan was taking when he was this age as she takes a good variety of solids. The other day we let her have some rice with bak ku teh soup, and she loved it!


In terms of learning and development, babydoll is now very interested in "posting" or slotting items into slots, so I am offering her more opportunities to "post" and I sometimes combine that with an "open and close" activity. For "open and close", she started getting interested when she was about eight or nine months old. I gave her lots of containers with lids to play with and board books to flip. She especially liked (and still likes) to play with the flip cover of my phone - she can flip it open with one finger!

Here's a simple example of a "posting" activity combined with an "open and close" activity which we do - we slot coins into a container with a lid and then we take the lid off and empty it and start again. Simple, simple - and it achieves the purpose.

Slotting activities develop hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. You can increase the difficulty level as your child grows in experience and expertise. I'll show you in another post how we progressed from the very basic "put this ball in this box" to "slot the coin in the piggybank".


In her interactions with others, babydoll is showing up strong - she stands her ground whenever she is "bullied". For example, if Ryan snatches something from her, she snatches it right back. If Ryan tells her "No!", she yells "Ah!" right back at him. Heh heh. I like it. I like it a lot.


Ok, that's all for now. Growing up fast!

Oh the photos in this post were taken in April. I was waiting for the chance to post them! I love a little girl in a tutu, don't you?

Today, I want to pen an update on how I think Rachel is doing at Heguru.

Babydoll started in January this year at the Eunos outlet with Teacher Paige in the Infant and Toddlers programme. Since April/May, Teacher Rhian has taken over the reins from Teacher Paige, and Teacher Paige has moved on to teach the Preschool I programme.

At this time, I do not feel that Rachel is clicking with the programme.

I also feel that this is normal. Does that sound right? Haha, let me explain.

Last Sunday, Ryan and I attended a class at Heguru. The school had very kindly invited us to participate in and observe a trial of their new programme to be launched in July 2013.

The programme is called "Preschool I" and is for children between 4-6 years old. These are some of its features:
- The class is 70 minutes long. After the 70-minute class there will be a short debriefing session for parents to keep the parents informed of what the class did that day.
- The children are not accompanied by their parents in class. For last Sunday's class however, the parents were allowed to stay in the classroom to observe and to evaluate if the class was right for their children.
- The class size is larger than that of the Infant and Toddler class, with a minimum of ten students. There are benefits to a larger class size - the students have a prequel to primary school classes, the weaker students will be motivated by the energy of the stronger students, and the environment provides opportunities for learning social skills in a classroom setting. There is a sense of healthy competition as the children feed off each other's enthusiasm and eagerness, and there is a vibrancy in the air.
- There is one head teacher giving instructions and taking the children through the class, with a team of assistant teachers to assist the children.
- The first half of the class is mostly spent on input, which includes intuition games, memory games, math, and some moral teaching. The second half is spent on one handicraft and one booklet of worksheets. The aim of the second half is to strengthen the connection between the right and left parts of the brain. There is also a physical exercise segment and a dance segment.
- For the worksheets, the students work through the booklet together, one page at a time. They have one minute to work through one page.
- Each child is given two more booklets of worksheets to bring home for reinforcement and revision.
- Compared to the Infant and Toddler programme (which Rachel is attending), there is more emphasis on discipline, independence, and active participation by the children. The children have to carry out little tasks like hand up their name cards in a certain way, handle their worksheets on their own, sit in a certain way, and answer attendance call in a certain way. There is a segment where the children have to individually speak and do a short presentation in front of the class, and there are times when the children are expected to voice their own answers and responses to the activities.

If you have an image of what a Japanese or Chinese classroom is like, I'll bet your vision has well disciplined students, every child shooting his or her hand up to answer the teacher's questions and everything running like clockwork. That's pretty much the feel that I got. A little military-like with the teacher barking out orders, of course without the military put-downs and punishments. There is a level of strictness, but there still is a lot of positive encouragement. If the child is unable to do the activity, the child is simply encouraged to try again next time. Of course, there is a lot less of the huggy-feely stuff that we like to give our 1-3 year olds, which didn't seem to matter to these older children.

Did the children like it? I think yes, most of them felt the high energy and were spurred on by the challenging environment. All the children had no problem responding to the sharp and brisk tone of the teacher. Some of them were very responsive during the activities, shouting out their answers and eagerly putting up their hands when they completed their worksheets.

To be honest, the atmosphere felt stressful to me, but the students didn't seem stressed and, in fact, were enjoying themselves. A couple of them were withdrawn, but that seemed to me to be part of their personality. Perhaps being in a class like this will help them to come out of their shell?

The class was mainly made up of boys. I don't know if things would have been different if more girls had been in the mix. I do believe that, after a few classes, the students and the teacher will find their equilibrium so, ultimately, it may not matter as different genders, different personality traits, and different levels of engagement will all find synergy.

As for Ryan, he enjoyed the class, although I am not sure if it was because his good buddy Brayden attended the class with him! It took him a little while to get a feel of his surroundings and to get accustomed to the loudness of the teacher and the students. Nevertheless, he was interested in what was going on, kept his attention on the activities and generally managed to be independent and, after a couple of worksheets, he was comfortable enough to point out, "I'm not done yet!" when the teacher indicated time was up.

We won't be signing Ryan up for the programme. We are looking at signing him up for a martial arts class, so his schedule will be full. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience to attend the class. Fast-paced and challenging, full of energy, and I imagine that the children find it lots of fun. It was eye-opening to see the children responding so well and so eagerly to the teacher, and enjoying themselves in the process.

• All the class activities, right-brain and left-brain, can be reproduced at home. The parent is taught how to conduct activities at home (termed "home practice"). There are also additional right-brain activities, which are not done in class, but which you are encouraged to do with your child at home, like the math dots program. 
• There is ready-made material which parents can buy for home activities.
• The pace of the class is a little slower compared to Heguru, as most of the activities are carried out at a pace which parents can replicate at home.
• There are more hands-on activities, which is a better format for parent and child bonding.
• One parent accompanies the child in class throughout the entire programme (i.e from 0-6  years old).

So Rachel is starting with Shichida at 9 months, just as Ryan did. I originally intended to start Rachel off next term and I called the centre last Friday to inquire about classes. As Ryan is a Shichida student, Rachel has the privilege of being in the "priority queue" for a slot and so Rachel was offered an immediate slot in the April-June term, which kicked off last week. I checked with Richard if he thought Rachel was ready and he said she was more than ready. There was a slot in Teacher Noraini's class at a suitable time so we signed up for that one. Teacher Noraini was Ryan's first sensei at Shichida, so I knew that Rachel will be in good hands.

Both Teacher Noraini and Teacher Hirin (Ryan's current sensei) were very excited to see Rachel at Shichida and the three of us were squealing loudly when we came together just before the class started. We made so much noise that one of the students in the class started crying! Oops. Anyway, it's nice to know that our little family is loved.



Rachel is the youngest in her class. She joined an existing class which started in October last year, so her classmates have already been through two terms. That's great for me because it means that, at home, I can skip those activities which were done at the very beginning, like baby massage techniques and random linking memory using three objects (now the class is doing random linking memory with five picture cards). That's assuming that the programme is the same as it was when Ryan started on it back in 2009.

On that note, it's time to start preparing some Shichida stuff to do with Rachel at home huh?

Ok, let's talk about Heguru. I have received a number of queries on the programme so I hope this helps to shed some light.

To start off, let me describe a typical Heguru class.

Rachel is in the Infant and Toddler programme, which, at the moment, is the only programme offered by Heguru schools in Singapore. The class is one hour long and is conducted by a head teacher together with an assistant. The head teacher does all the talking while the assistant's main task is to help the head teacher prepare the next activity, distribute materials to the parents for each hands-on activity and collect the materials after the parents/children are done. The two teachers working together help to move the class along at a brisk pace. This is typical of right-brain training, where the right brain is provided as much stimulation as possible by showing the children different visuals at high speed.

From attending the Founders' seminar, I understand that, in the Infant and Toddler programme, Heguru aims to devote 80% of the activities to right brain stimulation and 20% to left brain activities. Most of the right brain activities are simply presented to the children very quickly and all the children have to do is watch and listen. Apart from that, no active action on the children's part is required. This means that the children spend most of the class watching the teachers "perform a show", and hopefully this translates to the right brain receiving lots and lots of stimulation.

I must point out that you should not go through the list above with a fine-toothed comb and try to compare and contrast the activities with those in other programmes. Some of the activities change from time to time and, like any right-brain training programme, there really isn't any sort of substantive syllabus, so there isn't much point in comparing the right brain stuff. The point that should be noted instead is that all the fundamentals of right brain training are covered.


We started Rachel off in January this year when she was a few weeks shy of 6 months. I think she is still the youngest in her class at the moment. Despite her age, she is the most mobile and she is the one who is constantly on the go, investigating new things and exploring new territory in the classroom. Last class, she crawled up to the tub of flashcards and pulled it off the trolley. (That's my girl!)

She certainly does not keep still and pay attention throughout the one hour. She has a healthy curiosity about her surroundings and it will take time before she is satisfied that she has checked out everything around her, whether it is the tub containing the flashcards, the cushion that she is supposed to sit on (last class she was wrestling with it) or the crayons that she is supposed to draw with (they always end up in her mouth). I actually regard her active and curious nature as a sign of intelligence (yeah, yeah, I know some of you are rolling your eyes at me!) and it actually makes me quite happy to see her looking around for new things to investigate. Nevertheless, I do expect that, when she eventually completes her explorations in the classroom, she will then settle down and watch the "show" for longer.


Now, she does pay attention to certain segments of the class, but this varies from week to week. Some weeks, she likes the flashcards segments and squeals in excitement as she watches them. Other weeks, she can't be bothered. Some weeks, she enjoys the storytelling; other weeks she'd rather rummage through my handbag. Most of the time though, she does enjoy the musical segments and of course the dancing.

It is also not easy to get her to give up the materials and return them after we do a hands-on activity. This is perfectly normal for a child her age (I remember Ryan went through this stage too) and she will learn the routine after a while. Anyway, for now, she is not actually able to do the activities - usually I will demonstrate it and hopefully she will absorb something from watching me.


Okay, that's quite a lot for now. These are pretty general comments which will give you a general but good enough picture. I do have further and more specific thoughts on Heguru but one post can only be so long before it gets too much so I will write more in future posts. Do let me know also if you have any specific queries and I'll try to address them as well.

How was your weekend? We spent our weekend in a very mellow manner. The most "exciting" thing we did was to have breakfast at Cafe Melba at Goodman Arts Centre on Saturday.

I don't have a lot of interesting photos to share - most of them look like this.

Yes, we spent the weekend very much enjoying our new ride.


The littles enjoyed the car too - the ride is very smooth at the back, as Ryan is demonstrating here.

Rachel is starting to put on more weight, which is lovely. She is doing very well with all the new and exciting food that we have been giving her, although her main diet is still breastmilk. She is not as soft spoken as Ryan - she loves to shout out a greeting when she sees us! She will also call out loudly to us when she wants attention - that's when she uses a sharp "Hah!"

Finally, I saw her first tooth! It's difficult to spot because firstly, she just won't keep still long enough and second, she is not fond of people poking their fingers into her mouth to open it for a peek! She is having a bit of a runny nose which some mummies tell me is a teething symptom. She is still cheerful and doesn't seem bothered by the teething.


Tomorrow Rachel will be having her third Heguru class at the Eunos centre. At home, we are not doing much of anything. At this stage, I try to talk/sing to her, give her various things to touch/feel/taste, let her exercise as much as she wants to, and give her lots of cuddles and kisses. That's all. We are not even reading (I know that will probably shock some of you).

Anyway, speaking of kisses, Rachel surprised me the other day because she gave me raspberry kisses! (A raspberry kiss is a sloppy kiss where you blow, making a farting sound.) I thought it was accidental, but she kept doing it on my thigh and she had a cheeky smile on her face, so I know it was intentional.


Up till a few days ago, Rachel's nanny let her sit in a bouncer seat when Rachel was awake. With Ryan and another toddler running around in the living room, it was not the safest option to leave Rachel roaming about on the floor, plus her nanny didn't think that the floor was clean enough for a baby (she has much higher standards of cleanliness than I do). Anyway, her nanny observed that Rachel was leaning over the side of the bouncer to reach for toys that she had dropped on the floor so she grew concerned that Rachel would tumble out of her bouncer notwithstanding being strapped in. So her nanny got her a playpen. I would never use a playpen myself, in my own home, but in the circumstances, I was very happy to hear the news. I went out straightaway and bought a mattress for her playpen.

Not surprisingly, Rachel loves it! Compared to being strapped in a bouncer, it must be so liberating for her, plus she is queen of her own little castle. She crawls from corner to corner looking for her toys - her nanny teases her saying she is "digging for gold". She sleeps well when she is in it, turning onto her front which is her favourite sleep position. She even tries to pull herself up to a standing position while shouting "Hah!" at you through the mesh wall. Lots of opportunity to exercise and get those gross motor skills!

Ok, that's all for now. Have a lovely weekend!

Rachel attended her first Heguru class last weekend at Heguru Education Centre at Eunos.

To be honest, I had intended to start her on Shichida classes when she is much older. As long-time readers of this blog know, we have been a Shichida family since 2009, when we signed Ryan up for Shichida classes. I did a lot of reading and research on whole-brain training back then and the schools with the best reviews were Shichida and Heguru. Heguru did not have any schools in Singapore back in 2009, so Shichida it was. I do give credit to Shichida - Ryan enjoys his classes very much and I do see results.

Nevertheless, a part of me still wondered about Heguru. So when Heguru announced that they were setting up shop in Singapore starting January 2013, enrolling Rachel in Heguru was the perfect opportunity to find out more about it. So there we were on Saturday, in the good company of Teacher Paige and Assistant Teacher Marilyn.


There are three Heguru centres in Singapore now. Each centre is separately run, however. I signed up with the Eunos centre after checking out the teachers at all the three centres. I believe that the quality of the teachers is a major differentiating factor so I based my choice on that.

Although the Eunos centre is also the centre closest to home, proximity to home was not a consideration because we are not usually in the east on weekends. We are usually driving Ryan to his classes and all of Ryan's classes are not in the east.


Having attended the class, I do think that there are a few differences between Shichida and Heguru in terms of how the class is conducted, at least for Rachel's level. There are also a few differences in terms of the activities that are carried out in class. Nevertheless, the hallmarks of right-brain training are present - memory games, high-speed flashcards, intuition games and visualisation games.

Rachel was very active during the class, as she always is. She certainly did not sit down tamely on her little cushion for the whole one hour. Nevertheless, she didn't fall asleep - haha! She was constantly alert and constantly stimulated. That's what I concluded because she was completely spent after the class and immediately fell asleep when I strapped her into her car seat. She took a solid nap while I picked the boys up and she continued to sleep through our lunch!


Having practised Shichida for more than 3 years, there are a few things about Heguru that I need to adjust to. I still have the option of switching Rachel to Shichida if I decide I prefer Shichida for her but that decision can only be made after we have attended classes for a while. Who knows, maybe I'll end up switching Ryan to Heguru? I'm just keeping an open mind at the moment and so far, so good.

If you are curious about Heguru, the centre at Eunos is holding information sessions for parents this Saturday and next Saturday (12 and 19 January 2013) from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. Click here to register.