Joel had his head shaved while he was staying for a few nights at his Nenek Tuaran’s place. This is the third time he’s had a hair cut; the first one was when he was 7 months old, and the second while he was 14 months old.

Just like his big brother Eric, Joel’s hair has been growing unevenly, though lately it’s looking better. This should be his last shave-off, I hope. He’ll be getting a normal haircut from now on.

*Gondol is a Malay word meaning bald-headed.

Your bottle is my bottle, is how Joel sees it. I’m partly to blame for his behavior towards Ezra’s bottle, because I switched Joel’s to a bigger sized bottle while passing over his smaller bottle for Ezra’s use. Joel still hasn’t gotten the hang of the idea.

So what has happened is that not only is Joel drinking off his new bottle, he also drinks off Ezra’s (and Ezra’s formula) just because he enjoys it. I would make a bottle for Joel, and a bottle for Ezra, and when it’s Ezra’s feeding time, it’s abracadabra gone and the next thing I knew Joel was happily sucking his baby brother’s feed. Oh well.

By the way, I never meant to abandon this blog for so long. It’s just that, well, you know, life comes first, blogging second I hope my posting will resume to normal starting today. I’ll be doing a bit of back posting too just to fill up the gaps.

Now I am in my kampung Tuaran Labuaya. I have a cousin. His name is also Eric Ribuan and Eric noel is my name. He is 11 years old. I have my PS2 in the kampung. He doesn’t have a video game. His daddy doesn’t buy for him.

It’s been three weeks since I started teaching Joel how to potty. It’s not working well, to say the least.

For one thing, he doesn’t like his potty; maybe he thinks it’s a little too small for him. He is almost as big as Eric was when Eric was 2-1/2 years old, so it was easier for Eric to sit on the potty compared to Joel. Plus, I was still working and sent Eric to the day care center every weekday, so I suppose Eric also learned a thing or two about going to the potty while he was there. The other issue I had with the potty training is that Joel only knows how to communicate when he wants to poop. He doesn’t signal anything when it comes to him wanting to pee.

It’s only been three weeks, though. I suppose I need to show him the concept of using the potty first before teaching him how to poop in it. Right now, I’m demonstrating to him the use of the potty by throwing his poop into it, then taking him along to the toilet as I cleaned up his potty. That has only happened ten times in the last few weeks, because most of the time when Joel poops, his ah po (Chinese word for grandma) would always beat me to it and cleaned him up. I’ll have to wait until my husband’s parents return to their home before I can hope that Joel’s potty training can work as I planned.

A long time ago, I used to actively keep up with Eric’s developmental activities, noting down what month he started rolling, crawling, standing up, had his first tooth, etc. Although I pay attention to Joel’s development as well, I haven’t really been rushing to put things on paper, or blog them.

It’s good to note, anyways, that Joel has been reaching all his milestones like a text book, even his 13-to-18-month milestones. He doesn’t throw tantrums that much, as he’s been using the simple sign languages I’ve taught him whenever he’s hungry, sleepy, wanting to bathe, or even changing the channels and choosing the cartoons he wants to watch. Joel loves to say bye-bye and hi to his dad on his way to and from work. He’s also a real joker, who likes to entertain Eric and myself with his pretend falling down antics and turning around in a spot till he’s dizzy and then having a big laugh out of it.

I’m eagerly awaiting Joel to reach his next crucial milestone — learning to potty. I’m pretty anxious about this because I haven’t really taught him how to communicate with me whenever he wants to urinate; he only knows how to tell me when he poos. He’s almost a year and a half now, the same age as when I started potty training Eric, and he managed to go diaper-free after just 3 months. I don’t know how both of us did it, but I hope Joel and I get the same success because it does look like Joel doesn’t enjoy his potty that much.