Out Of The Box

Little Bee had been displaying somewhat defiant, out of the box behaviour during learning sessions - compared to her very disciplined big sister at the same age. As I was flipping through her Chinese exercise book one evening, I was aghast to see 2 big doodles in 2 of the empty pages where the kids are supposed to paste Chinese phrases and draw them out in the upcoming weeks.

I stared at the page, looked at her proud face when she noticed I was looking at her drawing, and asked her, "Erm, does 老师 know you drew this in the page for next week's work?" 

She looked at me innocently and quipped, "NOPE!" Then she continued excitedly, "This is Mickey Mouse! From Disneyland!" And flashed a dazzling smile, asking for my approval of her drawing. I did not have the heart to tell her that she was not supposed to doodle in these pages. 

Her version of Mickey Mouse

She has been writing her name in upper caps fairly well by now, and is progressing to scrawling her name in the lower caps all by herself, just from imitation, after she started attending N2 this year. She has also been trying to spell out her name aloud, from memory. 

She started cultivating an interest in tracing the outline of her little hands since our learning theme of "All About Me". This was done all by herself when she was trying to entertain herself, unsupervised. 

I was told by her teacher that she is very interested in painting, always wanting to be first in class when painting starts. Indeed, she had been doodling a lot at home, possibly as a form of self expression as her spoken articulation skills are still not as fluent yet. 

Just this evening, she whipped out her box of paints and paintbrushes, and started painting an apple tree with 4 big red apples in the tree all by herself! I was delighted when she asked me to look at her drawing. 

Self portrait - doesn't it look like Alvin the Chipmunk or something?!

She started drawing animals and told me this picture is about an ant (at bottom of the page) trying to eat a long hotdog with a cat (!!??)

Conversations with her

Little Bee is growing up so fast yet I am constantly amazed at her innocence and naivete through conversations with her. 

Last Saturday afternoon, Hubby and I had the good opportunity of spending private time with her as Big Bee was attending one of her many parties with her friends. We were shopping in Zara and saw a wonderful collection of really adorable baby shoes for tiny infants. After I "oohed" and "aahed" substantially, Little Bee ogled at the shoes with big round eyes, stared at me and launched into this conversation with me:

Little Bee: "(Little Bee) cannot wear these shoes. Too small for me. These are for dogs. Dog shoes!"

She beamed her signature grin as I broke into amused chuckles. 

Mummy: "No! These are not the dog shoes that Mummy showed you before. These are for really tiny babies!"

Little Bee: (stared at me unconvincingly) "Oh. (sounding rather downcast) Baby shoes? For babies?"

She then gingerly picked a pair of diminutive sneakers up, stared at them intensely, then looked at me with a dubious expression and declared with a definitive level of confidence...

Little Bee: "This is for dogs. Very small. These are dog shoes!"

*faint*

On another occasion at home, she called out, "Mummy! I want to shh shh!" As she was perched on the toilet bowl, she looked at me woefully, looked downwards, shook her head and uttered, "Oopsy, no shh shh. Shh Shh is sleeping." *???*

This is such a wonderful time in her life, when she is blooming with innocence and communicating through different means. Terrific threes indeed!