Richie completes 1 year of playschool

It was just the other day Richie joined playschool. And he has already completed 1 year of schooling. Time passes so fast. Today Richie said to me before going to sleep, "Mama, I want to go to school". When I look back I realize how busy I got with life and the newborn Ronan that I just didn't have time to reflect on things. Ronan completes 7 months in a couple of days and Richie completed 3 years.

Richie had a makeover from a shy introvert kid to an extrovert one. His teacher said that he used to answer questions before anybody could and sometimes she had to tell him strictly to give a chance to others.

Richie learnt a lot of things in school. Some of the things Richie is good at are:
-can do coloring on his own.
-sings nursery rhymes well.
-can sing the National Anthem well.
-knows all the alphabets and numbers till 100,
-knows a spell 3 letter and 4 letter words.

Ronan - 6 months milestones

Ronan is actually doing much more than we expected and pray that he progresses well.

Here are his 6 months achievements.

-Plays with his hands and feet

-Can roll over on his tummy and do mini-pushups.

-Turns toward sounds and voices

-Understands pa, ma, dada, mama and turns towards us.

-Recognizes his name and turns towards the person calling out his name.

-Squeals, gurgles, coos, blows bubbles

-Follows objects with eyes

-Can grasp a toy well and shake it up and down.

-Mouths objects.

-Passes objects from hand to hand

-Reaches out to objects in his vicinity.

-Loves to play with anything he gets his hand on, specially pa's newspaper.

-Likes to sit up balancing against pillows.

-Started eating solid food.

-Understands and gives handshake and hi-fi

-Shows stranger anxiety and cries if we are not around

-If someone approaches him with welcoming eyes and we are around he becomes a good friend after playing with them for sometime.

- Shouts and scolds ma, pa if he hungry and mama is not around. :)

Rattle Rattle Shake Shake Shake

Ronan is almost 3 months old. He can hold rattles well and shakes them when I say "shake, shake, shake". He stops, smiles and shakes it again. I guess he loves the sound of the rattle and wants to listen to it again and again. Rattle, rattle, shake shake shake.:)

Which month did your child achieve this milestone? Did you record it?

2.5 months old baby - milestones

Ronan is 2.5 months old and is growing well into a cute chubby baby. My elder son Richie was on the thinner side. I used to have lots of difficulties taking care of Richie. Richie used to cry a lot as he used to suffer from colic in the evenings. Maybe being a mother for a second time, it is different. You know how to handle stuff better and can do it easily.

Milestones:
Ronan is trying to recognize faces. He turns in the direction of my voice.
He has started laughing out loudly whenever he is tickled.
He also tries to imitate and laugh whenever someone laughs.
He tries to hold our hand and tell stories.

Ronan started cooing today.

It was a wonderful day today. We went for 7am mass. It was bit cold due to the misty dew. When we came back I changed Ronan and kept him in his pram to play. We were all having breakfast when Paa went to talk to him. He was asking him questions and Ronan started cooing back for the first time. It became louder and louder with Ronan smiling and throwing his hands and legs in the air as if to say "Lift me up Paa. I wanna play with you".

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.

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.

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.
  

Words with B

Richie loves to say the words starting with B. He points to the ball and says "Ba". He chases the pigeons in the park and says "Baa" meaning bird. When we go out on the cycle, he shouts "Ba,ba,baaaaa" which means Bus.
When I am reading, he goes "Ba", which means book. When going to the nursery, he waves to dada and says Ba,ba. When he sees the yellow fruit which the monkeys eat, he says "Ba" meaning banana. When we ask him, what does the sheep say, and he goes "Baaaa,Baaaa"!!

Saying the letter O,T,P, I

Richie's latest in the series is saying the letters O, T , I and P. Where ever we go, whether it is shopping mall, tourist spot, TV etc, he recognises those letters and shouts out loud. :) He knows Pooh, peas, start with P. When he sees T he starts "grrrooooow , groooowwww" meaning T for tiger. He can also draw O and tries some straight lines to draw T and I.

Richie at 18 months - milestones

Wondering what Richie is upto these days. He is trying to enhance his skills by practicing it more and more everyday. Thatz the thing I like about kids. They never give up. We as adults tend to give up soon, if we feel we cannot do a thing. That is the best lesson I learnt from Richie. "Mama, don't give up, keep trying".
Here is Richie at 18 months.Maybe I am missing a few. Will add it up as I remember them.

• walks well and sometimes runs too　- Started at 15.5 months
• learnt to say No and yes.
• shows strong likes and dislikes
• going to japanese nursery school and learns a lot of new stuff everyday and japanese words.
• points to things in the alphabet chart when called out.
• recognises and says few letters in the alphabet chart.
• makes 2-3 words sentences (which we cannot understand ).
• talks to himself while playing.
• plays on his own.
• dumps an object in imitation, such as throwing garbage away
• does some abstract drawings.
  
• says dada, mama and looks at us while saying.
• tries to imitate the dog sound "waaaaaaah, aaaaaaaaah" and smiles.
• trying to eat with spoon and drink from cup
• laughs spontaneously if we start laughing.
• starts a conversation between 2 animals.
• tries to talk on the phone.
• can match a lot of shapes, triangle, heart, square, star etc.
• plays with push and pull toys
• likes to drive his car – groom, grooooooooom
• loves to shop, puts the things he likes in the basket.
• can build towers out of blocks and makes trains.
• loves to play pee-ka-boo and so-big
• imitates action songs.
• solves puzzles.
  
• loves to listen to story books.
• co-operates while dressing up by putting his hands in the t-shirt.

Drinking from the cup

Richie started drinking milk from the cup since May 2010. He was 15.5 months old then. If he sees us drinking water or juice from the glass, he immediately points and indicates that he too wants the same.

As kids always do, initially he used to spill all over (even with a bib) and there was extra trouble of changing and washing his clothes. Actually I guess they love to mess things a lil. Must be thinking, Mama should be given trouble sometimes.. ;)Now guess what he does.... Even if we try to help him, he drives us away. He has become jouzu (japanese word for skilled) now and can manage easily.

Richie matching shapes on Anpanman ball

Richie is 16 months old now. He has become very active and interactive too. He has an Anpanman (Japanese cartoon) ball having various shapes cut out on it. It has dual purpose. He can play it like a ball by rolling it or match the shapes with different colors.He started to match the shapes one-by-one. Some seemed pretty easy like circle,ellipse, but some others were a little difficult at first. Though we taught him a few first, he managed matching the rest himself with ease.