My dear darling Ronan

My little darling Ronan is a sweetheart. He is very naughty but yet very sweet. He has this cute little smile which he flashes whenever he is upto some mischief. ;)

If he gets angry, he beats the person. But when we pretend to cry, he comes and does "nice" with his cute little hands.

He likes to play with his brother Richie and other cousins, but tries to get things done his way.
He plays cricket, football, catching ball etc. He does good bowling and aims at the wickets. He also does running races with his brother.

Nowadays he rides his cycle by standing on it. I wonder where he learnt it!! Is it the influence of watching too many sports on TV?

Ronan joined school

Ronan joined school just a few days back.

He completed 2 years and there he was, going to play-school with his mickey-mouse bag on his shoulders containing his books, lunchbox, water bottle etc., finding it hard to say "good-bye" to mama; a few teardrops trickling down his cute little cheeks melting mama's heart.

Sad it may be to say "see you soon my little boy"; but nevertheless, my boy has to come out of his home and explore the new world ; a world of new friends, new people and infinite possiblities; And did I say time flies? Wasn't it just yesterday that I was holding his hand and guiding him to walk?

Richie doing pee-pee

Richie has started doing pee-pee and has become "pants-man" as the Japanese call it :). Finally he can tell us that he wanna pee and does it in style.

Richie joined playschool

It is almost 3.5 months since Richie joined playschool in our native place. We can see tremendous change in him. He can sing a lot of nursery rhymes with proper pronounciation. His favourite songs are "Humpty, Dumpty sat on a wall, Jack and Jill, Johnny, Johnny yes papa, Incy Wincy Spider, ABCD song etc.". He also does picture coloring, paper craft, finger painting etc. He can recognize and read capital and small alphabets and numbers till 20. He can speak in long sentences with proper tense. He knows names of everyone in the family and sometimes calls us out with our names instead of mama and dada ;).

Sometimes he getz lazy to go to school, but once he is there he is lost in his world. He comes home happy and tells a lot of stories of school and what he has done.

Picking up words fast

Nowadays every second is learning time for Richie. He picks up words spoken by others and repeats them whether it is in the native language or English. He has started speaking in short sentences.
His cousin sister loves music and dance. And whenever she puts music and dances, Richie imitates her and dances with her. If we look at him, he feels shy and comes running to us.

Richie says "sahi" for sorry

Richie loves to play with Pa. He will try to sit on his lap by climbing on the chair. They watch action movies together and guess what, Richie tries the new stunts he learns on Pa. He tries to do "dishum, dishum" and Pa has to defend himself. He throws objects at him and poor Pa is at the receiving end.

One day while playing with Pa he hit Pa and fell down and he uttered "Sahii". We were wondering what it meant. Then he happened to say it to other cousins too whenever they got hit while playing together. Itz when we realised that when he says "sahi" he means "Sorry". :)

Saying Thank chu (you)

It was just another day. As usual, we were playing and Richie expressed that he was hungry. I brought and gave him his favorite choco biscuit. He said "more biscuit", "2?". I gave him one more. And he said "Thank chu". O' wow!! He could say without anybody instructing him to do so.

and btw he also says "Oh Wow" and puts his hands to his mouth if he likes something very much. ;)

Learning Opposites

As Richie was going for a day care in Japan, he learnt a lot of Japanese words too. He is practicing saying opposites in English and Japanese. He says "Big car" ,* "Chisi (meaning small in japanese) car" and arranges them together.

Some more words he is learning are : Long stick * short stick, fat book* thin book, heavy*light, empty cup*full cup with ice cream.

We try to add his favourite foods to the vocabulary of opposites so that he can associate it and learn faster.

Saying colors and numbers

These are the days of fast learning for Richie. He can recognize and say the basic 12 colors and describes things with 2 word sentences like "green ball" ,"red car", "blue bedsheet", "pink pillow", "orange t-shirt".

He also tries to count objects and says he wants "5 balls", "2 biscuits", "more sugar","4 trees" etc.

He looks at picture book and says numbers till 10.

Celebrating Hina-Masturi in Japan

The Japanese Doll Festival (Hina-matsuri), or Girls' Day, is held on March 3. Platforms covered with a red carpet are used to display a set of ornamental dolls (雛人形, hina-ningyō) representing the Emperor, Empress, attendants, and musicians in traditional court dress of the Heian period.

Richie celebrated this festival with pomp in his nursery. They made dolls depicting the prince and princess and hung them on either side of a straw. The faces of the dolls were really worth admiring.
Some kids put mouth on top and eyes below, while some put them on the side. But whatever it was, their creativity was at its best. :)

Perfect Somersault

Richie has unique ways of surprising us. As he turned 2, he has become sweeter. He understands and responds well. Says a lot of new words everyday, some in Japanese and some English.
He also tries to tell stories of his adventures in the nursery but we cannot understand much of it.
But we make it a point to listen and respond to whatever we can make out of his stories. :)

Yesterday, after dinner, I was arranging Richie's bed. Though he has his bed, he loves to sleep on our bed ;). Making his bed has just become a ritual. It gets hard to put him to bed as he does not want to stop playing. As always, this little guy was in a play mood. But today was a bit different. I saw him doing something new. He put his head down on the bed and did a perfect somersault. When we clapped he went on and on. I had not seen him practising at home even once, so when did he learn it. The only answer can be "in the nursery". Kids learn fast by watching others and definately thatz what happened.

Toilet training - milestone

Completing 2 years marks another milestone. Kids are considered to be big enough to understand their body as well understand whatz happening in the world.

These days Richie has started with potty training in the nursery. Today marked the 1st day of his training and Richie completed it successfully. Soon after he got up from his afternoon nap, he was taken to the toilet. He was told to remove his pant's nappy and go to toilet. The teacher said that Richie found it interesting to see how the pee falls. Cute lil babies. They find joy in every new thing they see and do.

Drawing a circle and a straight line

Richie loves colors and he can recognize and name most of them. He usually scribbles and makes a circular drawing. Yesterday was different. In the morning, he attempted a full circle without overwriting it .
In the evening, dada and he were playing with colors when I was in the shower. Dada did some straight lines with him with all the different colors and then went to do his work. When I came back, I saw him picking the "purple color" and with the sound of the train "zhuk-zhuk-duku -duku" he draw a straight line. It felt great. He could distinguish the circle from straight line. Another feather to his cap.

Richie - 2 year milestones

Richie completed 2 years now. Wow, kids grow fast.He is going to Japanese nursery school and learning a lot of new stuff. So his language is a mixture os Japanese and English.As you are reading through, you will realise there are lot of cute lil expressions and words he uses in both the languages.
Here are some of things he loves to do:

• running fast and balancing himself at turns.
• kicking the ball well.
• making a train out of chocolates, toys, pens etc.
• balancing himself on a beam kept on ground.
• eats well with a spoon and drinks from the cup by himself.
• given a new toy, tries to figure out how it functions on his own.
• plays board games using dice.
  
• loves to draw with crayons.
• loves listening to story books with pictures.
• learnt the numbers from 1 -10 and says them loud.
• loves to imitate dada and does sword fighting with him.
  
• loves dancing and does steps based on the tempo and style of music.
• creates and sings his own songs.
• imitates action songs.
• likes a lot of cartoons, Mickey mouse and club house, Winnie the pooh, Chip and dale, Mr. bean, Tom and jerry etc.
  
• saying color words like aka(red), blue, elloello (yellow), purple, oelegole(orange), pink, black
  
• saying body parts eyes, nose,mouth and pointing to all parts.
• saying tshirt, pant, sheez.
• saying apple,ba(nana),orange (oelegole), papaya and points to other fruits
• greetings such as hello, hi , ba-bye.
• saying ba for butterfly, bus, butter, bird, ball.
• saying book and bookapeeka.
• loves to play hide and seek.
• loves when we say "yoidon (japanese)" and runs as fast as he can.
• talking on the phone imitating us and saying "aah, mama, yes".
• saying mama, dada, pa, ma, pooh, anpanman.
• understands 2 sentences japanese and english commands (like, take the crayons and put them in the container).
• says juice,cheeze,moon,sta (star),che(chair),water, con -for corn and coin, crock - for clock, crayon, color.
• saying the letters O, T, P (pooh), J, I, K, G, M (mmm),B,D,R.
• asking questions in japanese "dare - who is this?","Nani kore - What is this?"
• saying tamachi,dangi or tom and jerry, dame da -Thatz bad, this.
• ninjin - carrot
• saying a strong no when he does not like or does not want to do something.