Jean Cousins

Gabe had a little accident about a week ago. He tripped and hit his face on the edge of a wooden chair and had a cut on his eyebrow and some bruises on his face. I was quite surprised at how well I took it. Guess these days I have learned to trust the Lord more than before. Just looking back, there was no hard time I went through without God being there supporting me and giving me strength. He has given me such a beautiful family and He’s been faithfully blessing us and providing our needs so generously.

The school holiday’s over and Womens’ church is back on. I’m joining Ann’s group and we’re going to study about Key to Encouragement and yesterday was the first day and it is so encouraging already! I am looking forward to going back next week. I am very thankful that Gabe’s doing better when I leave him with Maggie, Dorothy and other kids while I’m having the bible study. Can’t thank those ladies enough!

I was invited to a Tupperware party at Mel B’s place and I really enjoyed it. And crazy enough I booked myself one, which I have no idea what to look forward to whatsoever, but oh well, just another experience. Dave and his family are so supportive and encouraging.

Dave and I have talked a bit more about having another child and the answer is ‘not yet’ but we lift it up to God. (May His will be done) My back is still pretty bad, guess it doesn’t help doing all the gardening and looking after a 19-month-old boy, but I enjoy them so much. Not sure whether I’ve ever mentioned that I have my own little garden bed in our backyard. There’s some chili, morning glory, spring onion, lemon glass, basils and mint. Oh, forgot to mention that the grape tomato vine Matt planted for us when he was down is still there and Gabe loves picking them thinking they are grapes.(yucky ones) I should take a picture and post it on here next time. It’s late, I should go to bed. G’night 🙂

Gabe’s 19 months old now. In the past month, he’s learned a whole lot about adjectives, numbers and alphabets. Gabe recognizes numbers 1 to 10 and learning to say ‘twenty, thirty…’ and he recognizes about 20 alphabets out of the 26, which I think is quite impressive.

His new favorite cartoons, characters(whatever you wanna call them) are now Elmo and Cookie Monster, oh…and Thomas the train… At night I usually go in his bedroom to check whether he’s still got his blankets on, sometimes I’d wake him up(as much as I try not to) and he’d say, “Hi, Mom! Watch Elmo, yeah?” and I’d say, “No, son, tomorrow.” and he’d say, “okay, no more Elmo” and goes back to sleep.

When we put clothes on him, we often tell him how he looks handsome and stuff and he’s learned to put those adjectives before some nouns, like…handsome jumper, awesome bib, amazing jacket, cool dude glasses, cute nappy and pretty flowers(he pronounces it wither the [er]bit.) Sometimes Gabe brings me his little beanies and asks me to put them on, and when I do it, he’d say…”Awwww…handsome!” We really enjoy these moments. The fact that he says things more clearly makes me worried sometimes, just because my boy’s growing and soon he’ll be independent and he’ll go around doing things himself and won’t need Mommy and Daddy’s help anymore. Oh well…

A lot of people have asked when we’re gonna have another child and I guess I’m not quite ready yet. I’ve got to work on my driver’s license and make sure my back is well enough to handle the pregnancy. The most important thing I guess is to make sure Gabe’s well nurtured and perhaps when he can do more things by himself and then we may consider having another one. In fact, we have to totally lift it up to God! May His will be done!

Gabe had his immune-shot today and he did well. He was upset at the nurse and pushed her hands away with the look on his face saying, ‘I’m cranky at you!’ but at the end he smiled at her and said, “bye bye” before we left. Grandpa and Grandma went down to the doctor’s with us as well. It was good having them over the weekend and Gabe was so happy to see his ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama.’

Gabe’s into numbers these days. Often he gets them right, but still a bit confused between 6 and 9, and 1 and 7, other than that he often gets them right when he sees the numbers. He’s talking a lot more and copying almost everything we say. He’s learning to say the seven days at the moment and it’s so funny that ‘Saturday’ seems to be the easiest day for him to pronounce. Anyway, I should get a nice video and post it on here. I need to go to bed now…zzzzzz

Gabe’s first word was “hello”-he said the word when he was two months old. When I was in Thailand, I got a chance to babysit my little nephew, Ford, can’t remember how old he was then but I was able to teach him to say a couple of words and since then I realized that baby can start talking when they’re that little.

I found Gabriel always tried to copy things I said since he was a couple of months old. He was able to ask the question, “what’s this?” since he was about 6 months and that was when I started to take time teaching him words, telling him what they are and how they relate to our daily life.

Being able to communicate has made him a happy boy.(That’s what we think anyway) These days he’s able to say “peace(please) and ta(thank you) when he asks for stuff. Recently just learned to say kyou kyou(Thank you) and it sounds so cute. He’s also learning to put words together and sometimes he gets it right, and sometimes we just have to guess what he’s trying to say.

Last Sunday at church, he’s finally old enough to join the other toddlers upstairs where parents are allowed to be with them for 5 minutes then they’ll have to leave their kids and go join the service. It was pretty emotional to me, thought he might cry, but it turned out so well. He just said “bye bye, Mom” and gave me a kiss and he was fine. I couldn’t concentrate on what Ray was preaching cuz I wondered whether Gabe would be crying or when those ladies were going to come down to get me, but thankfully that didn’t happen. After the service I ran straight up and Gabe pointed at me and said, “Mom” with a big smile and I was happy then to know that he had a good time. At women’s church, he’s going to join the bigger kids next week, so I’ll be able to just concentrate on the study. That’s such a blessing!

Oh, well! Anyway…this video shows our routine after giving him a bath or a shower, that’s when we learn more words together. Sometimes it’s a little bit tricky though cuz I breastfeed him right after putting the clothes on him and he’s often can’t be patient enough to have his tucker. 😀

Today’s our 3rd wedding anniversary and I got the most beautiful card ever with a very surprising gift. Dave and I took Gabe to the park this morning and had a good family time together before he headed off to work.

Gabe’s 17mths old now and he’s really into drawing, coloring and saying words and putting them together. Every number used to be ‘six’ and every alphabet ‘W’, but now he’s recognizing more and able to tell some differences. I often take him down the road and he’d walk to people’s mailbox and points at them then reads the number out. We made a new friend down the road about 4 houses from ours. Coral is such a lovely lady. She invited us in and showed us her lovely backyard and the 2 cute birds.

Gabe knows that Tuesdays and Sundays we go to church, so in the mornings of those two days he often says to me, “…church,” which I gathered he means today we’re going to church. I’m happy that he’s able to communicate a whole lot more, which makes things easier for me. We’re recently joining a playgroup, which takes place on every Friday morning where we join other ladies and their kids in the morning and the kids get to play and learn new stuff and the moms get to catch up and chill out.

Well, I added new slide show down at the bottom of this page, hope y’all enjoy ’em 🙂

We took Gabe to get his pictures taken. It took quite a long time, cuz he kept pointing at stuff around him and asked the lady what they were…hehe Well, finally we’ve got TWO versions and we think he’s adorable. (I know we’re bias)

Gabe’s saying a lot more words these days and I’ve better write them down so we can come back and look at them together when he grows up: aunty, uncle, mama(Grandma), Papa(grandpa), Ah-gong(Grandpa-Chinese), Ah-po(Grandma), Gege(older brother), Jiejie(older sister), Ah-yi(aunty), Teddy Pooh(he calls all the teddies Teddy Pooh, basically mixing Teddy bear and Pooh bear together-you can blame Daddy for that), bread, yuck, chunky, bye Dad, Bob(the tomato – from VeggieTales), ball, bib, burp, bird and a few other words we can’t think of right now.

The video explains it all 🙂

It’s Summer here in Australia now but we’ve got quite a bit of storm and rain in the past few weeks. We went to church this morning and went to Westpoint shopping center after that because I heard Dalta was coming and I wanted to see her sing. I’ve always liked her. We saw Natalie, the latest Australian Idol yesterday and she’s got beautiful voice as well! Anyway, we invited Alan and Saranya to join us and our plan was to go to Cabramatta after that. Thank God it didn’t happen!! Saranya and I decided to just do some grocery shopping there at Westpoint instead and after that Alan invited us to go to their place. I didn’t wanna go cuz I was tired and so was everybody else. It would be nice to just go home and have a nap. Anyway, we thought it would be nice to catch up with Alan since he was away for 2 weeks and would be great to talk about his trip! Later in the afternoon the sky was all dark, and I said ,”we should probably go home before it rains.”-I really wanted to. Saranya kept asking me to stay and go home after it stop raining. Okay then! So we stayed and there came the rain. It was louder than usual and we figured out it was actually hailing!! I was excited and ran outside with the camera and took some pictures. I picked up a piece of hail that I thought was big and put it in my palm and took a picture of it.

About 10 minutes later we received a phonecall from Mom and Dad saying Fiona’s house was damaged by hailstorm and they were the size of a fist(a tennis ball)! They asked whether our house was okay and we said oh yeah, it should be fine. It was quite sunny after the rain was gone and we decided to come home an hour later. We saw leaves and glasses everywhere on the road as we drove into Moody Street and the neighbors were out looking at the cars and that was when we thought, ‘oh no, our house!’ When I got off the car I saw some white stuff on the grass and had a close look and I was shocked to find out that they were the hail still the size of a golf ball. Dave and I went and checked around the house and we are so thankful that only one window is smashed and there are some dents on the roof and that was it. Neighbors have holes on their roof and their cars are damaged and straight away we know it was God. He is so good to us. If only we came home straight after the concert or if we went to Cabramatta, we would have been hit by the hailstorm and our car would have been damaged and perhaps we could have been injured as well. See more pictures here!

Wow! Another year’s about to end! God has been so good to us and we’re looking forward to the 2 week-holiday during Christmas and the new year. We plan to go up to the Central Coast to celebrate Christmas with family up there, then they’ll come down to spend a couple of days down here with us.
I am seeing a christian counselor for my postnatal depression. The depression I’m going through has a lot to do with my childhood and I am thankful that now it’s being dealt with professionally. The ladies at church have been a great support and I can’t thank them enough for their encouragement and prayers!
Gabriel’s still being a handful to me. Just three days ago, he started to climb up on the couch and I’m not excited at all. I know that many other kids his age have learned to do that a lot sooner than him. Gabe on the other hand is well in progress with his language and communication skills. I don’t want to encourage him to climb cuz I know one day it’s gonna come, but well it’s just another part of life I suppose and all I can do is to make sure he’s safe.
The weather in Australia is so changeable and often during the day it’s too hot so I just take him out and play on the front porch a lot instead of going out for a walk. He’s shown a lot of interest on basically everything around him. Being able to communicate a whole lot more makes him a happier child. I’m so thankful that there’s gonna be a christian playgroup around the area we live early next year and Gabe and I are lookin’ forward to being part of it!