Dearest Sophie,

You turned 29 mths today.

You’ve grown much over the past month since we’ve been in NZ.

You’ve settled well in daycare and have become familiar with the routine of going to daycare. Your teachers say that you love your books and are always getting them to read to you. You are totally enjoying the space and freedom to do different things everyday! Once you even got to play with spaghetti, just for the fun of it. 

Friends mean a lot to you and you care for them a lot. You enjoy their company and if we gave you the choice, you’d love to hang around your friends all the time! You are very sensitive to what your friends think of you even at a young age. You are a very perceptive little one. But that also means that you are very sensitive to them and I love how you are so gentle with Naomi and I can really see that you treasure her as your friend.

You are starting to express your feelings and tell us about your day. Today you said that you felt really bad about making your friend sad because you accidently cut up her toy. You didn’t say so many words but you did tell us the story and said you felt really bad.

You are finally learning your alphabets and Mummy has discovered that you are a very tactile learner! Looking at worksheets with letter N on it has no effect on you but give you a large cut up letter N to carry around all day long and it worked!

You are a really special girl and Mummy and Daddy love watching you grow. It’s so fun being with you.
 

Love
Mummy
 

It’s funny how everytime Sophie speaks and says something it still surprises me and sometimes it really tickles me.

This week she walked over to the neighbours’ to look for her friend Naomi but Naomi (a one year old little girl with the cutest smile ever!) wasn’t at home. But her mummy was sitting on the couch reading. So Sophie invited herself and sat on the single seater couch next to her and started talking to her. When I finally found her, I saw both of them having a conversation. My friend said Sophie asked her "How was your day?". HAHAHAH! So cute! You see, everyday after school, when we pick her up from daycare, we’ll ask her how was her day and she’ll ask us the same question in return. I guess she decided to ask our neighbour that day and make conversation.

Another thing. Tupu and Juliette, our classmates, are husband and wife. For whatever reasons, Sophie can’t get that right! Once she saw Juliette walking past our unit and she said, "Mummy, is that Tupu’s mother?" It was hilarious. Another time she asked, "Mummy, is that Tupu’s son?" Hee… She definitely know that they are related but it’s funny how she’s trying to figure the terms!

Hee I’ve got some time on my hands this Saturday morning coz James just took Sophie out to look for boxes. Btw, that’s their little time together every Sat morning so far – looking for boxes. Hee…

And guess what I’ve been doing? I’ve been reading blogs!!!!! What a treat! Wah it’s been a while since I’ve gone to kaypoh in other people’s lives. Boy do I miss my friends!!! It’s really good to keep in touch with what is happening.

The trick is, I found a way to minimise the bandwidth usage! I switched off the load pictures automatically preference on my Firefox browser! So I don’t get to see pictures (sigh…) but at least I get to read. However when I really want to see the pictures, I can "switch" it on again and load the pictures. I did the same for my email application and it works! That’s probably why I allow myself to be online more often! Hee…

We are into our 4th week of school. So far we’ve had Jeff and Diane Littleton teach us on Parenting and Cross Cultural Issues, Sam and Tina Hofmann (our school leaders) teach us on Families in Missions and Ministry and this week Children’s Bible Ministries is here to teach us on how to minister to children. 

We’ve got weekly assignments, journal (weekly reflections) and we’ve just handed in our first book report (How to really love your child by Ross Campbell). We’ve got 1 more book report and a final research paper due at the end of the course.

We also have a marriage video that we watch once a week and there are exercises that we have to complete during our “Marriage Time”. Marriage time is like a special couple time that we have once a week when the kids are at daycare for about an hour. NICE.

There are many levels in which a school like that works. On one level, we have the teaching which is sometimes more head knowledge yet another level, God’s speaking thru the teaching at the heart. That takes time to process. It’s hard to pin point what exactly we’re learning here. I guess I can share about what we learn in class or thru the videos BUT God is really training us at a deeper level thru the teaching, through examples we see and just the environment we are in, to grow our relationship with Him and strengthen and sharpen our marriage and ministry as a couple.

One of the most amazing outcome so far has been how the Lord has led us to lead worship together. Twice so far. James will lead and I will support. I’m learning how to support him and it’s been great! We have been so encouraged by how the Lord ministered and moved through us. Also we’ve also started praying together more. That’s something that we’ve always struggled to do faithfully. As we see the Lord answer prayer after prayer, we have more faith to really press in.

The thing about it is that we hardly see couples teaching or ministering together back home but it’s always been a desire for us to do so. I’m greatly encouraged by what I’m seeing here.
 

I find that Sophie has been doing a lot of growing up here.

Today she queued up for her own ice cream cone after dinner! I didn’t even know they were serving ice cream! I saw her queuing up but wasn’t quite sure what she was doing coz i was busy talking to someone. When I turned round, it was so funny to see her walking around happily and obviously pleased with herself that she got her own ice cream cone!

She’s also been asking for permission to go visit her friends and hang out with their families.  She really likes that! In fact everyday she’ll be at someone else’s house at some point. The nice thing about being in community is that there’s always another kid at our place and everyone’s ok with Sophie being over at theirs too.

But more and more it seems like she doesn’t really need us! Ha! She’s growing up real fast! One time, she even ate dinner with the older kids at their table instead of sitting with us! Aiyo! I was so surprised she ate her dinner well even on her own. Like a big girl.

And finally towards the end of last week, Sophie’s settled at daycare. No more crying. In fact once, she carried her school bag and walked out of the house without us towards the school. I had to run after her!

I think she’s pretty much settled down.  Thank God for that. Thank you for all those who are praying for us and for all your encouragements. 
 

Chilling with her baby friends

Originally uploaded by jamesandailing

I just uploaded some new pictures on our flickr site. Check it out.

Last week was quite challenging.

Sophie caught a bug early in the week and was vomiting for a whole day. She woke up at 4.30am and started throwing up. Oh my! I’ve never experienced so much puking from Sophie before! It went on and off thru the day.  It cleared by evening and she was pretty much ok by then. 

I stayed home with her for two days just to make sure that the bug was gone before she went back to school. The second day James had a brilliant idea and we used the baby monitor on the reverse so that I could hear the lectures at home, LIVE! Super cool. Over this period of time, I’ve grown to appreciate how creative James can be! He’s set up a wireless network, created some shelves using cardboards, webcam Sophie sleeping in the room before we managed to borrow a baby monitor etc. He just built her a cafe with cardboard boxes and he’s in the midst of building a house for her. Hee.

We have been finding it very challenging with Sophie. She hasn’t been eating, sleeping or even settling well at daycare. Very trying. I think the change in structure and environment is taking a toll on her. 

Most of the time she is still only eating peanut butter sandwich, fruits, milk, yogurt, cheese and eggs. She hardly touched her main meals! But this week seems better. She’s been eating more of her food now. Woo hoo! 

Her sleep patterns have also been strange. She keeps waking up in the night and calling for us or sometimes crying. I’m not sure if they were nightmares. Last week we were attending to her through the night almost 3-4 times a night. Déjà vu of the early days! I think it’s getting better after much prayer. Apparently some of the other kids have been waking up with nightmares too so we suspect it’s a spiritual attack.

The thing that still affects me a lot is that she cries when we leave her at the daycare. After the two days at home with me, we had to resettle her again at daycare. It’s so tough. The thing about her is that she doesn’t cry for long and she’ll stop after we leave but just the thought of leaving her crying tears me apart. Argh. I’m not very good at this. But we’re praying that it’ll get better.

I think because of all these changes, she’s also been acting up a lot with us. She’s trying all sort of ways to push the boundaries with us. Some days it can get really distracting and discouraging. 

But this week, everything is getting much better and we just need to hang on and trust God that this will pass.