Because... I LIKE MUMMY!!

Renzo is getting more and more expressive after he turned 3, and nowadays he could explain things clearly to us even with reasoning, of course not all the time.

So conversation with this little chatterbox can get really funny!

Example 1:
Renzo: "I don't want to go to school!"
Mummy: "Why Renzo?"
Renzo: "Because... I like mummy!"
-_-!
Renzo: "I want to play my toys at home with mummy!"

Example 2:
Renzo: "I don't want to shower!"
Daddy: "Why Renzo?"
Renzo: "Because... I like mummy!"
-_-!
Renzo: "I want Mummy to shower for Renzo!"

Example 3:
Renzo: "I am so scared of the thunder!"
Mummy: "You don't have to feel scared Renzo!"
Renzo: "But, I never scare of thunder already!"
Mummy: "Huh, why suddenly you are not scared then?"
Renzo: "Because... I like mummy!"
-_-!
Renzo: "Mummy will hug hug Renzo, and I will not cry, and I never scare of thunder already!"

Example 4:
Renzo: "I am so worried about you Daddy!"
Daddy: "Why Renzo?"
Renzo: "Because... I like mummy!"
-_-!
Renzo: "I like to talk with mummy, and, Rynus didi likes daddy, but, Rynus didi cannot speak with daddy! I am so worried about you Daddy!"

It seems that as long as he could not provide a valid reason or not sure about the answer to the question, he will tell the whole world that the simple reason is because, he likes his mummy!

Yes mummy's little sweetheart, I LIKE YOU TOO!!!

The Terrible Two that does not end at Terrific Three..

Daddy Chan has blogged about Renzo's "Terrible Twos" and I have mentioned before that maybe it's going to come to an end soon..

The fact is, I was all wrong!!

But with a year of experience observing and interacting with this "terrible" little boy, we somehow figured out his way of doing and interpreting things. Although we could not agree with him on most occasions, we jolly well understand how to get things done in a twisted way (not 100% his way but not 100% our way either), without making Renzo too cranky.

Of course we have to give Renzo some credits, after turning "Terrific Three", he is showing signs of improvement. He does not throw tantrums without any reason, yes he still throws tantrums for sure but but but, there's always a reason, be it valid or invalid. And look at the bright side, he's able to express himself well enough for us to understand what he really wants, so we could address his needs more effectively, and rapidly...

If I have not mentioned anything about how fussy Renzo is when comes to food, yes just like most other kids, he's gone through a long period of "no vegetables" diet, I meant REALLY LONG period, which lasted for almost a whole year. He started off with eating vegetables only in school but not at home, after we enrolled him into full day childcare for a few months last year. Slowly, things got worse and he was even rejecting vegetables in school and became very picky during meal time. Only during these recent weeks, he started to have much better appetite and eat almost everything we offer to him, including all types of vegetables. This must be the greatest improvement I've seen so far. I have no magic solution to his eating problem during the past one year although we've tried almost every method you could think of. All we did was just to wait... wait for Renzo to outgrow this stage on his own.


Luckily Renzo is a big fan of fruits, all kinds of fruits (besides mango, which causes rashes on his skin), he even loves durians!!  And many people questioned how can he be so chubby if he does not eat??!! Well he basically survived on fruits!! If you've seen how he gobbled down 2 big pears, 2 medium apples, 1 banana and a few pieces of papaya in a stretch of 3-4 hours, you will understand what I meant.

Anyway, there are still a hundred and one "Renzo problems" awaiting for us to tackle, we understand that his "Terrible TWO" is not going to end at "Terrific THREE" but we are willing to welcome his "Fabulous Four" to come in less than a year's time!!

First writing exercise at home...

Little Renzo is almost 3 years and 2 months old, and for the past 1 year, he did hit quite a few milestones and I was just running through his progress (especially academic progress) in my mind, and realized that it's time to reinforce on his writing skills.

Since he turned 2, he has mastered all his alphabets and phonic sounds of single letters, and slowly he grasped a bit of first and last sound concept, and he's able to count from one to hundreds. And in recent months, he started reading along with Daddy, be it by memorizing the words, or by pronouncing with phonic sounds, he is able to read some simple words or sight words such as "at", "you", "are", "the", "and", "cat", "map", "game", "note", etc.. He's pretty good with his first and last sound but not the middle sound yet. Hence I planned to work on his middle sound training from now till he turns 4. But at the same time, I am a little concerned with his handwriting as his coloring work from school is not nicely done most of the time. So from last night, we decided to have Renzo work on his alphabet writing for about 10 - 15 minutes before his bedtime. He has been writing letters and numbers on and off before, especially with his finger on his daddy ipad, but it is just not his daily routine in the past. And let's just face the fact (not the excuse) that boys are slow in their fine motor skill development so being able to hold a pencil and write properly, is just something I never expect Renzo to do at this age.

As it's a very last minute decision, we did not prepare "training materials", like letter tracing books. Well he has quite a few of them but all of them come with colorful pictures which I find quite distracting to certain extend. Hence we used a plain piece of A4 paper for the night, before I could grab any exercise book for Renzo from bookstore on the following day.

We started him with a bit of coloring to get him warmed up and comfortable before we moved on to the actual writing exercise. Renzo was not too excited but definitely did not show any sign of frustration during the entire 15 minutes session. But it did took him quite a while to figure out the fact that he is supposed to "WRITE" but not "DRAW" a letter A.

Renzo's first attempt on his own to write letter A - he almost drew it out.. But considering he's "drawing" from his memory without referring to any example, that's a good try!

Daddy wrote a few "A"s and asked him to follow and these are what we got, apparently he was trying to draw a semi circle..

I drew 5 dots and asked Renzo to link them up to form an "A", thought that's a pretty easy method till I caught him "coloring" that dot -_-!!..

Then I changed my strategy and asked him to link the numbers from 1 to 2, 1 to 3 then 4 to 5, not to my surprise, he has stronger interest in numbers and he managed to follow my instruction much better..

Lastly he wrote this A with correct order of strokes, but just not enough strength.. 

Lastly, Daddy took over the coaching job and asked him to write a few more times till he finally completed the exercise by writing an A in the box on his own..

I looked at Renzo's school work, he has been tracing letters and numbers but there's no real independent writing yet. To me there is a slight difference because tracing is rather easy for kids at this age as long as the could follow the dotted lines. Whereas writing on their own means they really need to memorize how the letter/number looks, and writing the strokes in correct order is quite a challenge to them. Let's just see how much he could improve in the next 10 months, as he will be required to start spelling in school during K1 which is just less than 2 years from now!!