Why Yes, I Do Frequently Burst Out in Song

So I've joined Facebook. A person new to Singapore invited me to join, and I ended up finding half of my high school class on there, as well as many of my friends in Atlanta and Singapore. It's been fun catching up with everyone, though it reminds me that I am now twice the age I was when I graduated from high school. Anyway, there are groups that you can join which will be shown on your profile to give friends an idea of your interests. I've joined high school, college, and pharmacy school alumni groups, plus a few random "just for fun" groups, one of which is the title of this post.

I joined this group because I do like to sing (though not well at all), and I do enjoy musicals, but mostly I joined in honor of Graeme and Liam. Graeme is singing more than his ABCs now. He started entertaining us with hilarious renditions of "Happy Birthday" sung into anything remotely resembling a microphone. Liam soon joined him, and now they both sing while in funny little stances like tiny Elvis's, wearing T-shirts and Elmo/Nemo/Cars/Thomas underwear instead of sparkly jumpsuits. Grandma Arlene and Grandpa Denny were lucky enough to witness a short demonstration while webcamming a couple of weeks ago. Graeme has added "Wheels On the Bus" and "Where is Thumbkin?" to his repertoire just in the past couple of days. And, yes, he just sings whenever he feels the need.

While I'm on the subject, Liam has a developed a reaction to the rest of the family's singing. Whenever Graeme, Sean, or I sing, Liam adopts the talk-to-the-hand pose and whines, "Noooooooo" as though his ears are bleeding. We're not great singers, but I didn't think we were that bad. He doesn't do this when his Kindermusik teacher sings, so maybe we are terrible instead of just mediocre.

The boys' language development continues to amaze us. Before Grandma Ar and Aunt Mar's late July/August visit, the kids would speak in several short sentences. After the visit, their sentences and words were more complex. Liam now says things like, "I want to go downstairs and play with my digger in the playroom".

This past week, the boys began narrating on a regular basis while playing, and their play has become more imaginative. They talk about going places a lot, particularly by plane, boat, and cable car. Evidently our cable car ride to Sentosa Island made an impression. And, unfortunately for our discipline approach, the boys have declared the Group W bench an airplane, which they fly in every day. The laundry basket is a boat, and a small ride-on car is the cable car. They go shopping for food often, and they have afternoon tea with their new dinosaurs. The boys also pretend to spray us with water like firefighters. And, of course, they play with their airplanes, rocket, and Tonka trucks every day. We're doing lots of reading of the Mouse Cookie anthology too, with "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" their current favorite of the series.

As for the terrible twos phase, Liam's the whiner and Graeme is tantrum/angry boy. Overall, they're good kids, but today I had to give Graeme a you-better-shape-up-or-I'm-taking- you-out-of-this-room speech at Kindermusik, and later Liam whined and needed a "hug, hug, hug" for 30 minutes after he woke up from his nap. Graeme's reaction lately when he doesn't get his way: scream or get extremely frustrated in one way or another. Liam's reaction: whine and act put-upon. Alas, I am subjected to both common annoying toddler habits, though it could certainly be worse in terms of frequency.

That said, there are so many sweet, hilarious moments with the boys that all the annoying stuff is (mostly) forgotten. When he wasn't showing his rear in Kindermusik today, Graeme was telling the teacher what to do in a helpful way and putting away the instruments. After the teacher announced quiet time, Graeme repeated "quiet time" loudly and told her to turn off the lights. Later this afternoon, Liam cuddled on the couch with a baby doll after pretending to feed her a bottle. He then collected a few plastic dinosaurs and managed to hug them and the doll at the same time. I'll write in my next post about the crazy dinner conversation tonight.

And finally, a potty training update: We've managed to go to My Gym last Thursday, the zoo yesterday, a picnic at the Botanic Gardens yesterday, and Kindermusik today without accidents. Today was completely accident-free for both boys, and they both pooped in the "big potty" as they call it - the regular toilet with a plastic seat insert so they don't fall in. Yay! They're growing up.