Caleb's at the age where he is WATCHING us all the time. Watching and imitating. Before he turned two, I think he spent quite a far bit of his time trying to imitate me. He would do things like take my hairband and try to wear it or take a rubber band and try to tie his hair after seeing me do it. Well, I think after he turned two, he has taken to imitating Daddy a lot more than me. Perhaps he's associating with Daddy more now since he's getting very aware of gender differences between boys and girls. He'll say things to Daddy like "Daddy, boys wear pants and girls wear skirts right?" or he'll say "Daddy, girls must wear t-shirts on top when they go out right? but sometimes boys don't need right?"
So anyway, recently he's been saying and doing the strangest things. Ya, strange initially then upon reflection, we realise that he's actually imitating us.
On Chinese New Year's day morning, I was trying to dress him up to get ready to go visiting. He was jumping around and not cooperating so I put on my stern voice and said "CALEB!". He stared at me for a short while, stop jumping around and allowed me to dress him up and then he said to me... "Mummy, next time when I grow up and you do something wrong, I'll look at you and say MUMMY!" and he used the exact same tone that I had used on him!
Yesterday, he just came to me all of a sudden and pointed his index finger at me and said, "Mummy, this finger is for saying NO right?" I was dumbfounded for a moment then I realised that whenever he does something that he's not supposed to, we have a habit of pointing our index finger at him and telling him no. This is especially so with Daddy.
And then when I was playing with him in the living room and I said, "Caleb, come and play with me" and he said in a very nonchalant voice, "um... see how, maybe got no time." I thought for a moment and realised that that's what we say to him when he ask to play some more and if we're in a hurry or it's close to his bed time, we'll not commit to him and prepare him by telling him "maybe got no time".
A few days ago, I left Sarah by herself on my bed. Caleb, seeing that she's awake, went to her, put his hand some distance above her face and started wriggling his fingers and said, "Meimei, see my fingers." That's what Daddy does to buy some time with Sarah when she wants attention and he's busy with his work. He'll thrust out one hand and wriggle his fingers and Sarah will get distracted by his fingers for a while and just stare intently at them moving above her.
(Post qualification from Daddy... "I don't just wriggle my fingers in front of her lah. I do more educational stuff than that by slowly opening my fingers and counting from 1 to 5 at the same time, so she's actually learning how to count! Hehe.)
I reminded Daddy last night that we really got to watch what we say and do coz the children are watching us ALL the time.
