Right brain training Part 2: Image Play

Image Play

Start the session with:

1) Deep breathing & normal breathing (3x)

2) Energy balls (relaxation exercise)

3) Praise the child’s good points

Example 1:

-         Lie down with eyes closed & pretend to sleep

-         Take deep breaths, exhale slowly and flatten your tummy

-         Then inhale and swell out your tummy like a big balloon

-         Repeat this breathing 3 times then back to normal breathing

-         Imagine you’re a puppy. You’re at the gymnastic hall. You wave to mommy who’s sitting at the corner. You were smiling away & you are very happy because you like the gymnastic teacher and your cute little gymnastic friends.

-         You can open your eyes slowly and see a corner of the room. You can see that you’re in your gymnastic hall with your cute friends and loving teacher. Everybody take a mat and put them on the floor.

-         Now, you can see everybody sitting in front of the teacher. Raise your hand if you can see them. OK, put down your hand.

-         You stretch like teacher and your friend stretch their body too.  Could you tell me how it is like?

-         Well, you are coming back to your seat. And close your eyes. When I count to 3, you will come back to yourself. 1,2,3.

Example 2:

-         Today we’ll play in a music class.

-         Lie down and close your eyes

-         Deep breathing 3 times and back to normal breathing

-         Imagine you’re little teddy. You’re in the Opus music room. This is a place where all the music instruments are kept. All your friends sit in a circle, in front of your music teacher. Everybody is excited and happy because teacher is going to give you a music instrument. What is teacher giving you today?

-         What is going to happen? Your image can take you anywhere you want.

-         Remember what you see in your image and tell me what happened when you come back. I am going to stop talking for a while.

Right brain training Part 1: Senses play

<><>

Senses Play covers Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Hand Reading Ability and Precognitive Ability. Before starting the games below, we need to do with the child:

- deep breathing, energy ball, praise child's good points.

1) Telepathy (mother knows the answer)

a) Animal cards -Place 5 cards face up infront of the child,      place 5 cards face down infront of mother.

- mother picks 1 card & stares at it intensely, sees the image   on   her brain, says - from among the 5 cards, pick up the   same card that mother has in her hand now

b) Guessing mothers mind

- mother and child face each other - get child to guess shapes,   colours, animal, transportation vehicles etc that's in mothers'   mind

2) Clairvoyance (mother doesn't know the answer)

a) Identifying cards

'- Place 5 cards face down infront of the child. Ask the child   to guess, without looking at the card, the mothers points to

b) What is in the box

'-put 1 ball in a box, out of a possible five colours.Guess the   colour without touching the ball.

c) recollection of cards game - find the matching pair.

d) blindfolded game

-once a & b are 100% succesfull, do blindfold game. Have  an object or map placed infront of the child without him  touching the object and ask the child to guess.

e) Catch mummy game '-blind fold the child

3) Hand Reading Ability

a) Guessing colour

- at 1 side of a completely sealed cardboard box, make a   round hole just right for a hand holding a ball. Put 5 balls   inside.Guess the colour before the child takes out the ball.

b) Card play

Lay 10 cards face down infront of the child. Have him touch the card one by one and guess the colour of the card. Animal cards can be used as well

c) What is written on paper

On a piece of a square paper 2 cm each sides, write 1 alphabet. Wrap up into a ball and hand it to the child. Ask him to put the paper to his ear, or tuck under his armpit and guess what is written on the paper

-child will know the letter as it will appear on the area in front of his special eye

4) Precognition ability - to predict what is going to happen

a) Guessing the weather - have the child predict the next   day's weather

b) Guessing the card

Guess the order of the next day's five cards and write his prediction down. Then the next day, cut the cards well, line them up face down and then 1 by 1 turn them over to see if they agree with the order written down the day before. Suggest to the child that what he is trying to guess about the future will be seen as an image by the special eye.

Right brain training for kids

Shichida suggests that we do home practice with our children the below everyday.

1) Senses play
2) Image play
3) Memory play
4) Speed Play - Flash card
5) Speed Play - Dot card
6) Eye Training
7) Music play
8) Reading or Writting Practice

It's said that we can complete all the above within 15 minutes. However, I failed to find time and energy to do any of the above. Since I'm working and have very little time for ZY and JK, I came up with a new idea. I'm spreading the 7 activities into 7 days. I'll write down the activities for each game in my next blog.

Baby had jaundice

I couldn't produce sufficient milk to let him sleep soundly and so, he couldn't stay still under the phototherapy machine. He needed about 3OZ every 2-3 hours and I was too tired to be able to produce sufficient milk. My effort on the first night at the hospital was wasted as doc said his jaundice reading shot up. I didn't sleep the whole night.

Nurse then adviced to put him at the hospital's nursery and asked me to go home. I could send my milk to them whenever I have, I could even go there and breast feed him directly if I want to. The moment I left him at the nursery, I cried while walking back to my room to collect my stuff. We checked out and went home with mom and confinement lady. Sometimes, they gave baby formula milk if I couldn't send my milk to them on time i.e. when I couldn't manage to produce milk.

After 3 days, baby was discharged. ZY at the same time had fever & flu, we put him in mom's room so to seperate him from ZY. The next day, ZY had conjuctivities. We then send the baby with confinement lady to sis in law's house and I cried again. They stayed there for a week plus until ZY recovered from conjunctivitis. I missed baby dearly.

Despite ZY still having flu, we took baby home and put him in mom's room. Daddy caught ZY's flu virus too. Confinement lady slept in mom's room while mom went to SY's place to sleep. Since daddy was sick, it was very difficult for me to get him to go out and buy things for me as I'm worried he'd be too tired. Later when ZY had fully recovered, mom shifted back and baby stayed downstairs with CL. I think it was somewhere 4th Aug, the 3rd week after baby was born.

From the first day, I woke up every 2-3 hours to express milk for the baby at the same time, supervised the CL and she was alright until the 4th week where she seemed to be rather tired and sleepy. She even fell asleep while feeding the baby. That was when I decided to take over the baby from her and took care of him myself at night. Initially, we wanted to extend her for one more month. But looking at her performance, we changed our mind.

Arrival of my 2nd child

The night when we got back from Sepang Gold Coast, I slipped in our master bedroom's toilet. Well, I didn't really fall on the floor, just slipped as the floor was wet. Luckily I manage to grip on the basin and the door knob. I wondered if I'd have leaks in the middle of the night..and so I did....

I can't remember what time it was in the middle of the night when I woke up to have a pee and felt wet after I put my undies back on. I changed and immediately I felt wet again. So then I changed again and I felt wet again. It was just a drop of water with diameter not more than 1 cm. That's when I suspected my water bag was probably leaking after the drastic slip in the toilet that evening.

Hence, the next morning, after settled some work in the office, I drove to the clinic with my hubby and doc confirmed that I was leaking and I should admit latest by 2:30pm for an emergency C-Section and I shouldn't eat anything. I sms-ed everybody and went for light lunch at Jaya Noodle House. I had a bowl of soup which I regretted later as it caused me to have ajinomoto attack. Ajinomoto attack = a sensation like a thousand needles poking my body all over. I thought "What I've done??!! I need to go for an operation later and I'm feeling so awful all over my body right now!!! Stupid me!!!". So then I tried to drink lots of water to flush the poison out from my system and it helped. I sweat abit and felt better. I hope I'll remember this if I decide to have another baby.

We reached hospital quite late. The nurse gave me something to clear my bowels which caused me to have stomach pain even on our way to have epidural jab. It's so embarrasing!! But I'd to go toilet no matter what. So, the nurse had to lead me to the staff's toilet twice and had to wait for me to finish my bussiness. Hahaha!!

When I delivered ZY last time, I wasn't afraid at all. But this round, I was terrified. I don't know why. Luckily everything went smoothly. The moment the doctor pulled him out, he cried so loud. I almost cried too when I heard his cry. This is another sweet & touching moment for me. The nurse put his face so near to mine and I could smell him. His nose was touching mine. He looked so cute!!  Doc said the baby's head is big and his weight is 3.275, very close to what we estimated. Later, I was given a hot blanket and I manage to sleep for awhile. Then I was pushed back to my room where hubby and sis were waiting for me.

At last, the baby is out. It was getting difficult to toss around at night when I wanted to sleep. I'm glad that he's out and I can lie on my back comfortably.

That night itself, everybody came to visit, even dad. He just had his nose surgery and he came all the way from Johore. I'm really very touched.

Holiday during 38th week of pregnancy

We've been contemplating to stay home or to join the company trip to Sepang Gold Coast. At last, we decided to go since the journey there is about 1 hour. Mom, sis in law, Adam and SY went with us. The water chalet is nice and comfy. We're staying in a 2 bedroom water chalet. However, the food was lousy. There were flies everywhere and I didn't eat much due to that. ZY had a great time with daddy, SYin & Mag at the pool while I stayed in the room to rest & took some pictures. We stayed only for a night. Mom was worried that I'd have an emergency labour while we're there. Luckily, all went well. We went home on Sunday morning.

Cramps during 3rd trimester

I was in my 36th week of pregnancy and experienced cramps few times a day which made me worry that I'd deliver anytime soon. Then I googled and saw an article about dehydration during pregnancy which would cause cramps.

I think I drank less water because I had a new water bottle which I didn't quite like and it's smaller than my previous water bottle. Hence, although I thought I drank alot but maybe it wasn't as much as before. So then I switched back to my "2 liter" water bottle and made sure I drink at least 2 liters of water a day. Since then, I had no more cramps. Writting this down will prevent me from having cramps again in my next pregnancy..if I decide to have another child. :S

Lost 0.4kg past 2 weeks

Although I've booked a cambodian maid since last Friday, I can't stop dwelling on the matter. I worry alot. I worry about having communication problem with her, I worry that she's stubborn, I worry that she has bad character, I worry that she dislike shower and doesn't know how to clean herself well, worst of all, I worry that mom will have a very difficult time with her. All these are driving me crazy. I'm trying to concentrate more on finding the solutions and stop worrying. She looked pleasant from the profile. Some said she looks like Yani. But she definitely looks younger than Yani.

I've lost 0.4kg for the past 2 weeks. Luckily, baby's growing. He's gained 0.4kg. Haha! He suppose to be growing 0.5kg every 2 weeks. I guess because I didn't gain weight this round.

Oh God, I hope this cambodian maid will be as good as Yani. I hope she'll be a fast learner and does her work well so that she can be a good helper to mom and won't give her too much headache & frustration.
I hope everything will go smoothly.

Solutions to our problems..

On Sunday, we went to Daveleen Confinement Center to check out their confinement packages. We can either stay in at their center or hire their confinement lady home for 28 days. We visited their center at SS4. It's a corner unit double story link house. The baby room is down stairs and there are 7 mothers staying there currently. They have another center at TTDI but it’s too far to travel there for hubby and ZY from Puchong if I really plan to stay in. So, at last, we decided to get their confinement lady to stay over at our place for 28 days instead.  Since it's quite a last minute decision to get a CL, the charges is higher i.e. RM3600. The herbs cost RM2000 including 2 post-natal massages.

We’ve also decided to send ZY and Mag to day care at their school starting from June or July until we get a new maid. So mom only needs to take care of my newborn once I resume to work in September. Good planning? Honestly, I’m just heart sick to send the children to day care, but I really don’t have any choice. A lot of people have been telling me that they’re old enough and they’ll be happy at day care with more friends to play with. I hope they’ll be happy. As for the CL, I hope I’ll get a very good one who is clean, can cook well and is good at handling baby.

Shattered hope? HOPE NOT!!

Just when I thought I've everything planned out for my 2 months confinement, I got a call from my maid who's having her holiday back home to say that she's diagnose with uterus cancer. My mind went blanked. This means she might not be coming back. I'm left with 8 weeks to deliver the baby. Seriously, I'm worried, no matter how much I tell myself that everything will be alright without her. I really got to write down what are the things that I'd need and needed to do before and after the baby arrives. I regretted canceling my booking with my friend's confinement lady earlier and wasted RM300 for booking fee. I really didn't expect this would happen. I thought this round I'd be able to rest my backbones well. I hated running up and down the stairs when I had ZY last time. All the walking really hurt my back and my wound a lot and having a dreadful time bending over to change ZY's nappy every 1-2 hours when she pee or poop in the middle of the night. After her big & small business, I'd to breastfeed her for another 30 to 45 minutes; followed by pumping out the extra milk to increase my milk production. I think what I'll do is to put all the necessary equipment for washing the baby breast pump in my room so I wouldn't have to run downstairs for cleaning. At least, I'll just need to run downstairs to do laundry and eat my food. If I'm staying in a condo, I wouldn't be so worry because I wouldn't need to walk so far to the kitchen and to the laundry area. My worst fear is that my mom will be over exhausted. Mom will have to cook and bath the baby for me during the confinement period. Even if I get a confinement lady, what happens after 1 month or when I've to go to work after 2 months? Mom will have to handle the baby all by herself. I'll be at work. When I come home, I'll be busy breast-feeding the baby, cleaning my breast pump, doing laundry and giving attention to ZY. Then I might also have to wake up several times to nurse the baby at night. I told ZY just now that kakak (the maid) called up and said she's sick. Do you think she'll come back here? She said no. So I said then who's going to help mommy to take care of baby? She said “me”. My heart melted.

Fears & worries...

End of July is just around the corner & I'm feeling more and more anxious & excited everyday. I haven't got a good breast pump, a black out curtain & I need to get my air-cond serviced too. Since I'm most probably going to breast feed for maybe about 2 years after I deliver, I definitely will need a very good breast pump. My experience with the old Pigeon pump was tiring. However, it was very convenient and I got used to it after awhile, despite complaining about my extremely tired fingers due to excessive pumping. The question now is whether I should go for manual or electric breast pump & single or double? Is electric pump very noisy? Prices of breast pumps are crazy nowadays. My concern is to find the breast pump not satisfactory after buying it and I'm not able to return it! Then my RM2K will just go wasted & I've to get another one or stick back to my old Pigeon manual pump which costs only RM200++. Although Medela has quite some good reviews, but I've used one single electric pump before & I wasn't satisfied at all with it. I'm not sure if it's due to the old motor or I just got very used to my comfortable manual Pigeon breast pump at that time. The price for Medela electric double pumps is RM1888 & for Avent is RM2200, which comes along with a travel bag & cooler pack, which was selling at Mother & Baby Expo 2011 at Midvalley last weekend. Sigh! That's crazy! Sign again! Who knows maybe when the time comes, I'll get one for myself despite the crazy price! 

Benefits of Daddy joining gym

At last! Daddy signed up for gym to get healthier. It isn't as expensive as we thought. It's only RM90 per month for 17 months. His tummy was growing bigger & bigger each day and he started to snore some time ago. Hmm..those are signs of your body getting unhealthy right? So now, every morning he wakes up around 7am and goes to the gym for his 1 hour exercise. Then he comes home & get himself ready to go to work. Another benefit of joining the gym is that he's stronger now to carry ZY whenever she gets tired walking at the mall. As for the extra fats on his tummy, he would need probably 2 months to shed it off since he has been feeding it for awhile! Sometimes at night, he wakes up to change ZY's diaper and let me sleep in. Oh...!! I feel loved!! I appreciate that alot since I've difficulty to fall asleep at night nowadays due to my big tummy. Most of the time, I read blogs/articles on my iPhone on the bed until my eyes feel tired, then shut it off & doze off after few minutes. Sometimes, I do deep breathing although that doesn't help me to fall asleep any faster.
Now, daddy is healthier and doesn't get tired easily. For him to go to gym that early, he needs to go to sleep around 10:30pm. That's good because that's ZY's sleeping time. She gets into bed easily if daddy joins her.
Then next morning, she wakes up feeling fresher and able to pay attention better in class.

Tweedle Wink DVDs

I've been pondering over the question whether to buy Tweedle Wink DVDs for ZY ever since I stopped her from attending TW classes and switched her to Heguru.

At last, I bought them last month when TW released their final three DVDs & were selling the whole set of 12 DVDs at a discounted price. The promotion ended 31 March, 2011 but I managed to grab the last bite on 1st April from TW branch at Bandar Puteri Puchong!

It contains 200 flash cards in 1 lesson & each DVD has 4 lessons. So there're 800 flash cards in 1 DVD covering lots of topics like arts, culture, geography, science, phonics, math spots & music.

I limit ZY to 1 lesson a day & repeat the same lesson the next day. The 3rd day, we'll move on to the next lesson. 1 lesson lasts about 5-10 minutes only.

No regrets so far for spending money on these DVDs! :) since I've no time to make so many flash cards by myself and I don't have to worry about storage problems.

Shichida

After being in Shichida's waiting list for almost 2 years, at last I was called to enrol ZY for their April intake. Since ZY is already in Heguru, I was contemplating if I should stay on with Heguru or go for Shichida. After discussing this with my sil, she suggested I replace her to take SY to her Shichida class to see the difference myself.

So, I attended Shichida class today at Centre Point, PJ with SY, my 3 years old niece. In the class, there were 6 tiny tables & 12 tiny chairs like the ones in the kindi. Each child is accompanied by their parent.  During the entire session, Alpha wave music was played. The class began with good morning song in Japanese. Next, Sensei read out loud the day & date today. Both day & date were written on a card board which was placed on the white board. Sensei took it down for each child to touch & feel using their little hands for a second. Then they did breathing exercise & activated their super head, eyes, nose, mouth & tongue by touching them with the child's hands. After that the children were given a pair of goggles & snorkle for their imaginary game. Today, they pretended to dive into the sea. The children were asked to close their eyes & were taken to the back of the classroom with their pair of goggles & snorkle to touch the pictures of things in the ocean that were hung up on the walls. Later, they were escorted back to their seats & were told to close their eyes again and imagine that they were back to their class.

Below are the summary of what we did in the class today...

Speed reading:
Audio was played at x2, x4, x8 speed and back to the normal speed. Each child was given a cute little book made from few printed A4 paper, placed in a few plastic sheet protectors before the story was played.

Eye Play:
A marker pen was given to each child to join up the dotted zig zag lines on a card which was placed in a plastic sheet protector.

Photographic Memory:
Sensei showed a picture of a garden with 4 birds at different places to the children just 1 time for 3-4 seconds. The children then were asked to place the picture of the birds on the correct places on their own picture card given by sensei. They were given about 2-3 different sets to try out for the photographic memory part.

Linking Memory
Sensei flashed about 15 cards and repeated 3 times before giving the children their set of cards to arrange according to the sequence sensei flashed them. After making sure the children have put their cards in the correct sequence, they were asked to close all the cards. Then sensei picked out a card from her set and asked the children to pick the same card from their set. We did this about 5 times using the same set of cards.

Flash cards
There were different categories of flash cards shown. Speed was about 2 cards in 1 second.

ESP
Sensei placed 3 pictures on the table; a sea urchin, an octopus & a fish. Sensei then touched the sea urchin picture and said "Oh , this is sharp", then the fish & said "this is soft" & lastly the octopus & said "this is soft too". Next, the children were given their set of pictures and were asked to close them and shuffle them around. Then they were asked to pick out the sea urchin picture by touching the 3 cards.

Math
Sensei showed the children a card with 2 empty square boxes with a plus sign in between and an "equal to 4" sign at the right end i.e. _ + _ = 4. Then she placed 4 marbles in one of the empty square & pointed that 4 plus zero (in the other box) is equal to 4. Lastly, the children were given their sets of marbles & cards to play with mommy.

Chopstick
The children were given a pair of special chopstick where there's a place for their thumb and the 2 sticks are join together at one end. Each child were given a picture showing 3 coloured square boxes which looked like a train. Then they were given a bowl of colourful sponges and were asked to pick each up with their chopstick and place it in the correct coloured box.

The class ended with a japanese goodbye song.

So, despite the fact that Shichida is more famous than Heguru, my decision is still to stay with Heguru; reason being it's convenient to get a carpark at MidValley in the morning and their teaching materials are still new. Last but not least, ZY's teacher seems very professional & she's able to connect with the children well.

21 weeks into pregnancy

Baby boy is growing bigger and bigger in my tummy. Sometimes, my tummy feels like bursting. I'm only in my 21 weeks of pregnancy and I've 19 weeks to go. Can't imagine how I'd feel when I go into the 9th month. I'd be like a heavy walking water balloon. Last week, I weight only 47.9kg. Doctor said baby is growing well. So don't worry about my weight. He's stronger now as I can feel him when he moves around in there. It's like he's telling me "Mommy, I'm here". Each time I feel his movement, I'll smile. So sweet ....hehe!
There was 1 night, it was raining along with loud thunder sound, ZY climbed onto my bed and put her arm around my neck. She's scared. I like her to hug me like that. I told her to try to sleep so she won't hear the thunder anymore. At the same time, my little boy in my tummy moved more than usual, as if telling me " Mommy, how about me, how about me?". Hehehe!! I can imagine my 2 kids putting their arms around my neck next time when they hear thunder in the middle of the night and this mommy here will still be smiling away with contentment.

Sleepless nights

I've been worrying almost every night, before I sleep & when I wake up in the middle of the night. How it would be & would I be able to handle both toddler & my coming precious baby in mid July? I cried last night. I'm scared & worried. I think it's the pregnancy hormones that's causing this emotional turbulance.

Every night, after putting ZY to bed, I feel so tired & would start to think about things I've to do after that like nursing my new born then pump out the balance and take them downstairs to freeze them. Later part would be to get up every 2 hours to change & nurse him, then to go to work the next day. It'll be quite challenging if I've back-ache.

If I had to look for a silver lining in this cloud, at least I am having another child, just what I've been asking for all this while.

Sometimes after pouring out my problems here, I would find answers to my miseries.
1) Yani will get the pumps ready for me to do the job, the only thing I'd do is to put them in the fridge.
2) I could buy a mini fridge to put upstairs so that i wouldn't have to run downstairs.
3) I could buy 2 breast pumps for 2 sessions at night after nursing my son & 2 session at work. So, I save time on washing the pump for the next sessions usage.

I hated my vitamins!!

The most horrible thing that I cannot skip is taking my vitamins. They taste awful. I feel like crying everytime I need to take them. I used to take them after dinner. Sometimes waited until 12am mid night i.e. the last minute of the day to take the horrible vitamins. After that, I would suffer as I wouldn't  be able to fall asleep easily. So, now, I take my vitamins after lunch & in the evening,  I'm glad I don't have to take them anymore.