mylène daily

Yes, it has been a while again, since I wrote the last entry for this blog. The reason is that the period we are in at the moment with the construction of our new factory is so hectic that little time was left for updating the website.

So it comes, that only now the story of Mylene's 3rd birthday appears.

It was a very nice birthday. Opa & oma from Shanghai were there too. Even though, Mylene's birthday was on a weekday, we decided to celebrate it on the same day, as we were planning to go to USA the weekend afterwards. So, we kept it simple, and invited some friends with children to come in the afternoon and have dinner with us. Marco, Max, Adriaan and Toto were all there with their parents.

I think it was the first time Mylene realised it was her birthday; that was very special.
We bought a birthday cake for her, and she understood that she had to blow out the candles.
We sang 'happy birthday' for her, which she can also already sing all by herself.
The gift we had bought for her was a real hit: it was a plastic toy birthday cake, with lots of plastic candles, pieces of fruit, whipped cream, etc. to decorate the cake with. Mylene liked it a lot and was handing out pieces of it to her little friends. In fact, she is still playing with it almost every day.

For dinner we had, very special as well, Indonesion food, made by an Indonesian takeaway in Fuzhou which is so small that you have to order the amount of persons in advance and you have no choice in what it is you are going to be eating. You kind of eat what's on the table. It was delicious!

Of course, it was also a busy birthday with those kids running around in the house. It was even so busy, that Mylene got a fever that night. Luckily, it was not serious and she was fine quickly after.

As a last notable remark, Mylene's 3rd birthday was also the day from which onward she did not get her pacifyer any more. We had prepared her for this, by telling her that at the age of 3, she would be a big girl already, and big girls don't need pacifyers. Mylene understood this very well and without much protest, she accepted the situation ... to our surprise, I have to say.

Mylene continues to like singing and dancing.
Here is a nice video we took a while ago.

Most of you reading this blog will probably have no idea what the title means. "Chao Hu" is the name of a cartoon tiger around which a whole program of kids toys, DVDs, books, etc has been made. Shiqi knew it from her friends in Shangai, where it is supposedly quite big. The concept is as follows.
For a monthly subscription of around RMB100, every month, you get a box delivered at home. In the box there is a DVD, a work book and accompanying toys. Every month there is a special theme. On the DVD, Chao Hu is experiencing things that are related to the theme. Furthermore, there are songs and also, there are instructions for the parents about how to use the contents of the box to play with your child.
The contents of the box is dependent on the age of the child. So the child always receives things that fit to his or her age.

Of course, we took a subscription as well :-)
Mylene likes it a lot and she already knows that this box comes regularly. Last week, when somebody brought a package, she knew almost immediately that it was Chao Hu ... must quicker than I did.

We are quite happy with the program. First of all because Mylene likes it, but also because the games and toys are quite nice and educational. Even though the DVD might be a bit overdone in terms of educating good behaviour, the contents are nice and appealing.

Of course, also in this 'training program' Mylene is behind, in comparison to what she is supposed to know. But she seems to like it, and that's the most important at this stage. What she can do very well, is dancing to the songs on the DVD. She watches in great concentration how the kids on the DVD move to the song, and imitates each movement exactly ... so cute!!!

Since Mylene can walk, the one after the other pair of shoes comes into our house and without doubt, all with a good reason.
After about 1.5 years, I thought that it was time to make a short inventory though. So, today, we took out all pairs Myelene wore, and put them on the grass. There were in total 22 pairs of shoes!!

Even though Mylene doesn't always look like a girl, the shoe collection she built up in such a short time definitely could make the one or the other lady envious ... or is that more the merit of her mother ;-) ?

Still, there isn't as much progress in Mylene's Dutch talking skills as in her Chinese talking skills by far.

But, one development is worth mentioning.
Earlier I noted that Mylene seems to understand the concept of different languages.
Recently, she makes that very clear by telling us that papa calls something like this, and mama calls it like that.

Example: I showed Mylene a bird and said "Kijk Mylene, een vogel". Then Mylene answered "Papa shuo 'vogel', mama shuo 'xiao niao'"

She does that quite often now.

I have to say, I do need some help in getting Mylene's Dutch up to the next level, though.

So, opa and oma, be prepared. We are expecting a lot from you when you are here in April :-)

Here is one of the cutest pictures I took until now of our little girl.

Mylene likes to play with chopsticks very much, but usually we take them away, because we are afraid that she will accidentally hurt herself (or us) with them.

Last Saturday we were in a restaurant for lunch and Mylene was playing with chopsticks again. The food was already on the table, and Shiqi and I were talking.
As I wanted to take the chopsticks away, we suddenly noticed that Mylene was not just playing with the chopsticks, she was really using them to eat.

I made a quick snapshot with my mobile phone camera, and we let her finish her food, eating with chopsticks.

Mylene is talking Chinese already very well now. I must admit, she has overhauled me :-( On the positive side for me, I am learning a lot from her.
She is telling stories in Chinese, singing songs, and, most of, giving us orders about what it is that we need to do for her.
She can even count in Chinese:
"yi, er, san, si, wu, liu, qi, ba, jiu, shi, shi-yi, shi-er, shi-wu"
(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, ,12, 15)
We are not sure whether she has fully understood the concept of numbers, though. Because basically, what Mylene is doing, is repeating what she hears. And she is quite good at doing this.

This really adds a new dimension to the relationship. We are realizing again how important and valuable it is to be able to speak. It is much easier now, to understand what Mylene needs, or finding out what the problem is if she is feeling uncomfortable.

Of course, Shiqi is able to enjoy this even more than I do.
Therefore, I was very happy when a week or two ago Mylene took the first step in talking Dutch to me.
As every morning, we picked up Mylene from her room and brought her to ours, when she woke up and started to shout. The normal routine is that she comes into our bed, gets a 250ml package of milk with a straw, and 2 small "milk cookies".
That morning, Mylene sat in our bed, between Shiqi and me. And suddenly she turned to me and said in Dutch "Papa, melk drinken", then turned to Shiqi and said "Mama, wo yao he niunai" (I want to drink milk).
Even though the sentence was short, it made me very happy.

Since that morning, she is regularly saying some words in Dutch to me. She never does that to Shiqi. It seems she starts to find out how to distinguish Chinese from Dutch and also knows that papa talks Dutch and mama talks Chinese.

I wrote about the price Mylene won for her drawing, but never posted a picture. Here it is: Mylene proudly posing in front of the drawing (was it really made all by herself???).

A few days ago, I recorded a few movie clips of Mylene singing for us with my mobile phone. Even though the image quality is not great, the video is well worth showing here, I think.
Especially the way Mylene thanks her audience, "xie xie dajia" (thank you everybody), is very cute!!