Mummy’s entry – Monkey See, Monkey Do

Rye Li is at the stage now where she loves to mimic others around her. We were at 1 Utama two weekends ago and we were in a children’s shop, browsing around. This girl, noticed that I was looking at the display of children’s clothes and she followed suit.

Later on, at another store, I happened to squat down and was looking at some things, this girl came next to me and squatted as well and touched those things that I’ve touched before.

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Rye Li usually sees me doing my facial regime at nights ever since she was a baby and lately, whenever I’m doing this in front of her, she will copy my actions as well. When I dab the face toner on my face, she starts to pat her face. When I put on my eye gel around my eyes, she starts pointing at her eyes or rub them. When I put on the moisturizer on my face by rubbing them gently on my skin, she will start pointing all over her face.

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She has also learnt more words. I am amazed at how fast she is picking up new words all the time. When I ask her to say a word, she will always have a go at it. Most of the time, they are never pronounced properly but you can tell that it is the word she has been asked to say.

For example;

O-ren for orange

Eh-pa for apple

I’ve also taught her to say her Papa’s name and she will say “den-nissss” (Dennis). When I asked her to say my name, she will go “neen-nee” (Syn Nee). My mistake for teaching her, her Papa’s name first as whenever you mention “name”, she will go den-nisss even when I asked her what is my name. She will also out of the blue say his name for the sake of saying it (of course I’m a bit sore as I was the one that taught her to say these…haha).


She cannot pronounce the “K” sounds so when you ask her to say “kor kor” (Chinese for elder brother), she will say “tor tor”. When I ask her to say “kong kong” (Chinese for elderly men and in this case, her paternal grandfather), she will also say “tor tor”.

When I ask her to say car, she will go ”tar”.

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At times, she will surprise me with words that I’ve not taught her and I assume it was at the nursery that she picked these words from. For example:

I was putting on her clothes after her shower one day, and when I took her shirt to put it on her, she pointed at it and went “Nais!” (nice). Luckily she says this most of the time for the clothes I chose for her.

One night while she was lying down in her cot, drinking her milk, she started scratching her neck and she looked at me and went “chi-chi” (itchy) and indicated to me that she wants me to scratch for her. Now, there are a lot of “chi-chi’s” just so I can scratch for her.

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And now that she can say “I wan” (I want), it is always “I wan” this or “I wan” that and she surprised us one day when she answered us “I wan” when we told her no. She stressed it some more with “aaiiiii waannnnnnn”.

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Few days ago, I was talking to Aunty Ng (her caretaker) about a picnic that she is organizing. We mentioned the word park and this girl went “pak, I wan pak….pak. I wan wok-wok(walk)”. Her papa used to take her to the park nearby our place to walk and she knows what “park” means. I’m also surprised that she can remember vividly what the pavement of the park looks like as when she sees her photos on our pc at home, she will say “pak”.

can u believe that she can recognize this picture as the park's? and this was taken in March!

I’m in between very proud and at the same time “why so fast?!” about her speech ability as she knows how to manipulate it to get what she wants. Even if she doesn’t get her way, she knows how to annoy me with her whines.