Week 20 – How to entertain a toddler at home

When his kindergarten went on summer break, I had to face the ‘challenge’ spending more than 2 weeks HOME ALONE with the tot since we decided to fly home later.

Since I had the luxury of having her toddler spend a full day at the kindy, I was quite nervous about being a stay-at-home Mother again

WHAT WOULD I DO WITH A BOUNCING BALL OF ENERGY???

As usual, my wise and objective Hubby pointed out that I should see this time as the last 2 weeks the toddler will have Mummy all to himself. And he was right.

Taking this positively, I thought of a few activities we could do together at home. Also, as I had some writing assignments to complete that week, I planned NOT to cook at all and would just visit the restaurants nearby. All in all, I think we both had a lot of fun those 2 weeks

MAKING PANCAKES
One evening, I had some ripe bananas and asked if he’d like some banana pancakes (esp as dinner was running late). He perked up immediately while I went to the kitchen to check IF I had any flour, eggs and milk.

I laughed when he ran into the kitchen holding open the first few pages of Ladybird’s “The Big Pancake”! He read out the list of ingredients to make sure that I didn’t forget them LOL

He wanted to do everything “by yourself” so I let him spoon out the floor and whisk the mixture. He was pretty good although he got a bit excited and wanted to go “faster and faster”…

TABLE FOR TWO
When I started cooking the pancakes and he wasn’t allowed near the fire, he busied himself setting his little table. We actually had breakfast and tea a few times this way and he loved it!

He was so cute because he was excited about putting the chairs, the plates and his cup of juice neatly in place and kept tugging at my dress to go out and see. I remember a student of mine who would take his Mum out for “dates” – be nice if my boy and I could do the same too next time…

WATER COLOUR PAINTING
I’d bought this colouring book, which had a palette of watercolour paints set onto each page to use for a rainy day and found it useful to keep him entertained for at least 20 minutes.

When he wanted to paint, I allowed him to fill up half a cup of water from the kitchen tap (he can climb up a step stool) and bring it “be careful, be careful” one step at a time to the hall. Then, I found him a rag to dip his paintbrush and he was set.

Not all the watercolours work out well though and he’d report that the “brown colour is broken”. If I can find any more of these books, I’d definitely get some because it makes watercolour painting less messy at home. Or I may just get cakes of paints for him.

I AM BUSY! I AM WORKING!
When you work at home, it’s inevitable that your toddler will be curious and want to try out what you’re doing. Since I couldn’t let him watch (TV) his brains out alone, I sat with him on the sofa and respond whenever he commented on the action on the screen (which sometimes includes repeating the actions on Mummy!)

It was frustrating when I’m typing out a sentence or editing a paragraph and he’d want to have a go at my laptop. When I got tired of scolding him repeatedly or threatening to throw him out of the house if he didn’t stop disturbing me, I opened up a new document on Microsoft Word and let him type in his name, 123 and A-Z.

He got quite good using the mouse and right-clicking, scrolling, typing 1-0 over and over again, using the ‘backspace’ key to rub the page blank

After a while, he got bored of the laptop and went back to his own toys, books or TV. Here he is banging on Hubby’s keyboard saying “Youcas is busy. Youcas is working!” LOL

I WANT GO SWIMMING!
I was lucky to have my uncle visit us and he took him swimming one evening to give me a break. I think if I’ve been there, I’d have a heart attack because he actually let him swim around on his own with just a swim ring and NO arm floats!

The last time I took him swimming, I was by his side at all times but my uncle reported that the little fella could actually kick his way ahead of him quite quickly.

When Hubby took him swimming, he also reported that the toddler can actually kick his way around an “island” on his own with Hubby following him behind. While I was there, he was excited to show me how far he could swim on his own too. He’s such a water baby, I think we’ll have a lot of fun in the water in future!

Interestingly, my uncle thought swimming in the pool for 1 hour would wear him out but NO, he actually stayed up with us until 10 pm O_O so my uncle joked that he should take him out for 2 hours next time LOL

Other fun things we did:

1. take photos of the products I’ll be reviewing (he suggested a few photo compositions);
2. charm young and pretty waitresses into carrying him around the restaurant (“qu na bian!”, “qu zhe bian!” “go there!”) while Mummy enjoyed a nice lunch LOL (I’d actually spent 2 hours at some restaurants so he’d keep busy);
3. help me pack for home i.e. climb in and out or move the empty carton boxes all around the house!
4. help me choose apples, peaches or other fruit at the market or supermarket (“Mummy, this one nice?”)
5. build houses and trains with wooden blocks;
6. read, read, read;
7. fold paper aeroplanes which he went bonkers flying all around the apartment;
8. my blowing bubbles around our windy balcony while he chased them like a crazy cat…

Ahh, my dear boy, I’ll miss the one-on-one time we spent also even though at times I wanted to throw him out of the house! Luckily, I managed to get all my work done although it was REALLY stressful…

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