The highlights of our stay at my parents house were the New Year's celebration and our island beach escapade.
It is a tradition in our family to gather and celebrate all together on New Year’s eve. It was Mavi’s first time to party with his grandparents, uncles and aunties.. and cousins! (Sorry can’t post family pictures for privacy :D)
Seeing a whole roasted pig for the first time.
I was teaching him how to light a sparkler!
And the little boy so interested with this horn.
After the New Year, we headed out to an island beach resort which is 4 hrs drive from home. I really wanted Mavi to experience how we enjoy the beach in the Philippines. It’s not just about swimming in the water but doing lots of play and island adventure as well.
Making sandcastle :)
Island hopping with cousin
Beach
Starfish!
Cave!
Riding in front of the fishing boat is so much compared to being inside. Mavi with my not so little brother.
Early morning walk at the beach, finding dead corals, shells and hermit crabs! 
Oh we are missing all of these already!!
My son suffered separation anxiety for awhile. But I comforted him that we’ll have lots of family adventures here as well once it is springtime. I know its different with other families and relatives around, but we can’t do anything about it since they’re millions miles away from us. I love it that Mavi appreciated the trip, that he was able to appreciate the presence of other family members and felt the love that they have for him (and his brother).
Now I can’t wait to go back! LOL
Toddler activities for 2015! We’re starting the year with blue colour (although for 2015 the colour is green?)!. For our reading, we have two books this week that we kept on reading every day (when big brother is not home so as NOT to be distracted). Vito is starting to have longer attention span on books so we can read multiple books in one sitting these days. What’s funny though is that I end up singing the Brown Bear book instead of reading it.
We’ve got loads of this! We started with scribbling. While on vacation, I observed that Vito is becoming fond of scribbling. So I took our all different kinds of writing materials in our doodle drawer for him to explore. You can see below, we have the Crayola Pip Squeaks, Do-a-Dot (with supervision as this is NOT water washable), Crayola Egg Crayon and this writing magnet which we got as a freebie at Emirates (he loves this!).
Observing the little one on how to use some of these materials, he always started writing using his left. I am not sure yet if this is a sign of being left handed, but I still encourage him to use his right. See the upper-left picture? He also uses both hands! It’s amazing that at his age he seems to know how to properly grip the pen LOL.
And of course, we still use the buttons… and he uses both hands alternatively.
And we started using the barrels. I planned this for stacking activity but he likes using it for open and close activity. His first attempt was the red barrel which is the smallest one. 
Then he started to open the yellow which is a little bit bigger than the red.
When he got tired of opening and closing the barrels, I tried showing him how to stack the barrels and I caught him doing it as well :) Nice try! 
For our artsy this week, we used his favourite toy as a medium for painting.
Creating car prints was fun! But he loved touching the paints using his finger much more. 
Much of our our music adventures are not seen here, because we listen to music and doing lots of action songs as well. Occasionally, we use random materials to create music. Seen below is a cookie tin can lid (drum) and sharpies which we use as a drum set.
It is winter as of the moment, and the weather is negative outdoors so for the meantime, we are stuck at home and doing sensorial activities instead using natural materials LOL. He was eating this banana for breakfast, but when he had enough, he started playing with them. He squashed them! Oh those fingers are so strong! This is such a wonderful activity for those little fingers eh?
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